As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded today, November 8, 2021. On today's call are Sue Nabi, Chief Executive Officer, and Laurent Mercier, Chief Financial Officer. I would like to remind you that many of the comments today may contain forward-looking statements. Please refer to Coty's earnings release and the reports filed with the SEC, where the company lists factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. In addition, except where noted, the discussion of Coty's financial results and Coty's expectations reflect certain adjustments as specified in the non-GAAP financial measures section of the company's release. I will now turn the call over to Ms. Nabi.
Ladies and gentlemen, with our Q1 now complete, I'm very encouraged by the success we are having, further building on the strong foundation we put in place last year. The results we have delivered this quarter truly exemplify the virtuous circle that we have set out to create. In essence, it's a simple one where strong revenue growth, combined with growth margin and cost initiatives, simultaneously fuel profit expansion and strategic investments, which in turn drive future growth momentum. There are some key takeaways that I would like to first highlight. First, our Q1 revenue growth surpassed our expectations and guidance, with growth coming from both our Prestige and Consumer Beauty segments. We continued to see very strong demand for prestige products, particularly fragrances in the U.S. and China, with an impressive rebound in travel retail. This was further supported by our exceptional lineup of fragrance launches.
Meanwhile, we continued to see a recovery and improvement in consumer beauty, with particularly strong trends at both COVERGIRL and Max Factor. This resulted in like-for-like revenue growth of 21%, above our guidance of high teens growth. Second, we reported very strong profit growth during the quarter. This was fueled by a significant gross margin expansion of nearly 500 basis points, as well as further cost reductions. The substantial gross margin expansion we have seen is a true testament to the strength of our business model as we double down on our creative innovation and continue to premiumize our portfolio. Importantly, we continue to step up our investments in marketing. In fact, our work in media doubled versus last year.
Despite this, our adjusted EBITDA increased almost 70%, equating to 550 basis points of margin expansion, evidence that our virtuous circle is now in motion. Third, we continue to execute and make progress across our strategic growth pillars. I will, of course, be sharing some milestones with you today. However, I'm even more so excited for our Investor Day next week, when I will be joined by additional members of the Coty leadership team to provide a more in-depth update on the progress we have made on our strategic pillars, as well as our medium-term trajectory. Fourth, we see the momentum continuing into the year. We are on track for a great fiscal 2022. Our growing confidence in the momentum drives our increased sales guidance for the year, supported in particular by our initiatives across fragrance and cosmetics.
I will now take a few moments to cover our revenue trends during the quarter before Laurent takes you through our financials. I will finish with an update on our strategic progress and our outlook. Our Q1 revenues increased 21% like-for-like. The prestige segment grew 34% on a like-for-like basis, even as we continued to reduce sales in low-quality channels, which represented a low single-digit negative impact in the quarter. We continued to experience very robust prestige fragrance trends, particularly in the U.S., China, and travel retail, with nearly all brands exhibiting strong growth in the quarter. Our growth was further aided by our very strong launch calendar in the first quarter. This included Gucci Flora Gorgeous Gardenia, Burberry Hero, Calvin Klein Defy, and the relaunch of Kylie Cosmetics. Meanwhile, our prestige cosmetics sales more than doubled in the quarter.
Our consumer beauty segment increased 3% like for like as the global mass beauty category returned to growth, and we are seeing stabilization in our market share. Q1 growth was led by COVERGIRL and Max Factor as both brands continue to benefit from the new brand positionings. Moving to sales by region, we saw growth across all regions, though the U.S. and China continued to be standout performers and travel retail saw a true resurgence. The Americas region grew 23% like for like in the quarter, supported by double-digit growth in the U.S. as well as growth contribution from Latin America, Canada and Brazil. EMEA sales rose 17% like for like, with the most impactful contributors being the U.K., Russia as well as local travel retail.
The Asia Pacific region increased 29% like-for-like. With local travel retail tripling year-on-year and China seeing nearly 50% growth in the quarter, proving our efforts in turning this market into a powerhouse are bearing fruit. We are particularly pleased with these results in China and the broader market, particularly given some incremental restrictions that occurred in the quarter due to COVID. I will now hand the call over to Laurent to take you through our financial results.
Thank you, Sue. I am very pleased with our first quarter results, which continued our very strong pace of profit growth. Importantly, our virtuous cycle of growth is now in motion. Our profit was driven by strong gross margin improvement, allowing us to continue to reinvest in our strategic growth initiatives, thereby further fueling top-line growth momentum. Starting with our gross margin performance. Our Q1 adjusted gross margin of 63.4% increased by nearly 500 basis points from last year and 250 basis points from last quarter. This marks our third consecutive quarter of gross margin above 60%. Our gross margin performance was driven by favorable mix, both from the outsized growth of prestige as well as favorable product mix within the category.
Lower excess and obsolescence, fixed cost absorption on the increased sales, pricing and revenue management, supply chain productivity, and material cost reduction program. We continue to be very focused on further driving gross margin expansion both this year and in the years to come. As such, we have a very clear multi-pronged, multi-year gross margin attack plan in place, while we also expect we will continue to benefit from positive channel, category, and regional mix shifts. The gross margin expansion is key towards the virtuous cycle we have created of sales and profit growth. While the topic of inflationary pressure, supply chain bottlenecks, and component shortages are dominating conversations across all industries, I am pleased to say that so far, Coty is navigating through this uncertain environment quite well.
This is a result of both the agility of our supply chain and procurement teams, as well as the structure and drivers of our business model, where we are over-driving gross margin accretive channels, categories, and innovation. While we have seen isolated constraints in certain components, such as fragrance pumps, silicone and paper, our teams proactively increased safety stocks to protect our key consumption period, as well as implemented dual sourcing initiatives, all of which is proving to be effective. On freight, the vast majority of our freight is under contract rather than spot market, which has largely protected us from the excessive price hikes of recent months. At the same time, our teams proactively increased transportation lead time and secured freight capacity in advance to avoid potential freight constraints.
In the context of global supply chain bottlenecks and port congestion, it is important to note that the majority of our inventory is manufactured in the region where it is sold, which likewise protects our business. The net result of all these proactive efforts and business design decisions is that our service level in Q1 was very strong in the mid-90s and actually higher than the prior year, which has allowed us to both over-deliver on our sales guidance for the quarter and deliver close to 500 basis points of gross margin expansion year-over-year. Our outlook for Q2 service levels is in a similar range, despite higher than initially anticipated demand, which is also enabling us to raise our full year sales guidance.
While we do expect the impact from inflation in materials and freight to be somewhat higher in H2 2022, the impact is quite manageable, and we continue to expect our gross margin to expand in fiscal year 2022, fueled by revenue management initiatives in both Prestige and Consumer beauty, the mix benefit of Prestige expanding as a proportion of the mix, improved absorption from higher production volumes, and broader productivity efforts. During Q1, we maintained our stepped-up marketing investment. A&CP was approximately 26% of sales, consistent with the level of Q4, and significantly above the 20% level a year ago. The year-over-year increase was primarily driven by working media, which more than doubled year on year. Importantly, we remain vigilant in investing in the highest ROI opportunities and being nimble in our resource deployment.
You will hear more from Sue regarding the details of our success and progress in driving growth during the quarter. However, let me highlight a few areas where we were putting our marketing dollars during the quarter. First, we had a very busy launch calendar in the quarter, particularly within Prestige. We launched Gucci Flora Gorgeous Gardenia, Burberry Hero, Calvin Klein Defy, and the relaunch of Kylie Cosmetics, among others. These launches showed tremendous success in the quarter and contributed to our strong performance. We continue to fuel our expansion into new categories and markets, including prestige makeup and overall Asia. Finally, we continue to invest behind the repositioning of COVERGIRL, Rimmel, and Max Factor, which also showed promising results supporting consumer beauty business stabilization. We continue to strengthen our marketing investment and drive profit growth through further cost reduction. During Q1, our fixed costs declined by 8% year-over-year.
We achieved approximately $60 million of cost savings during the quarter with a front-loaded delivery of our fiscal 2022 savings target to enable sufficient flexibility in the P&L to deliver profit, yet reinvest in our brands during this critical holiday period. The primary drivers of these were cost savings, lower fixed costs, and trade investments. We remain well on track to achieve over $90 million of savings in fiscal 2022. Recall, this is net of cost inflation, reinstating bonuses, and structural organizational reinvestment behind our growth pillars. It's important to note that this does not include our intended reinvestment in A&CP. We have now achieved nearly $400 million of total savings, and we remain well on track to reach our fiscal 2023 target of a total of $600 million of savings, while we also continue to identify savings projects beyond fiscal 2023.
Moving to profit delivery in Q1. Our adjusted EBITDA performance was exceptionally strong in the quarter, increasing 67% year- over- year to $279 million. This resulted in a margin of over 20%, up 550 basis points above our first quarter last year. This significant improvement was driven by strong sales growth, robust gross margin expansion, and fixed cost leverage. We believe the stellar performance this quarter is further evidence of the strength of both our strategy and business model, and we continue to target both revenue and profitability growth in the years ahead. Turning now to our EPS, which included the following drivers. Adjusted EBITDA for Q1 of $279 million, depreciation of $78 million, income tax expense of $40 million, which equates to a tax rate of approximately 29% in line with our expectations.
As we previously noted, we expect a higher tax rate this year given our global principal jurisdictions are now in Amsterdam and in the U.S. $8 million other items and $29 million of adjusted preferred dividends. Please note that the preferred dividends were higher than typical in Q1. At a very high level, this was due to accounting rule requirement associated with KKR's conversions of accrued dividends into common shares as part of their first transaction in September. As a result, our Q1 diluted adjusted EPS ended at $0.08. While not included in our adjusted EPS, during the quarter, Wella's fair market value rose by $390 million. Looking ahead to Q2 and fiscal 2022, I would like to provide some context of the different drivers of our adjusted EPS.
First, consistent with what I said last quarter, we continue to expect interest expense in the mid-$200 million for fiscal 2022, reflecting a lower net debt balance offset by somewhat higher cost of debt post the recent refinancing. Second, as I previously mentioned, we anticipate an adjusted effective tax rate for fiscal 2022 in the high 20s%. However, we know there is a high degree of uncertainty with effective tax rate projections in the current environment. Third, on the preferred dividends, following today's announcement actions with KKR, we anticipate a roughly $7 million quarterly run rate going forward following this transaction and assuming no further conversion of preferred shares. Now moving to free cash flow for the quarter, which was strongly positive despite Q1 typically being a seasonally weaker cash flow quarter as we build inventory for the key holiday consumption period.
Importantly, working capital improved significantly in the quarter. We also continued strict management of CapEx and one-time costs. As a result, our Q1 free cash flow was $241 million. As we head into Q2 and beyond, we remain intent on further bolstering our cash flow, as well as driving a steady reduction in our net debt. Turning to our capital structure. We ended Q1 with a financial net debt balance of approximately $4.96 billion, which is a decrease of over $200 million from Q4. This is largely the result of our strong free cash flow.
Factoring our 40% stake of Wella at quarter end, valued at approximately $1.65 billion, we ended the quarter with economic net debt of around $3.3 billion. Please note that with the completion of the sale of an approximate 9% stake of Wella to KKR in October, and today the sale of another 4%, we now own 26% of the Wella business. Based on our current ownership stake in Wella, our economic net debt at the end of Q1 2022 would have been closer to $3.9 billion. We continue to view our retained 26% stake in Wella as a financial stake. The recent transactions prove the valuation upside in this business, as well as the liquidity of this stake. We will continue to be active and tactical in identifying opportunities to monetize this non-strategic Wella asset and further reduce leverage.
Additionally, we are continuing to make progress in improving the maturity profile of our debts. We have secured commitments to extend our revolver maturity to FY 2025 and reduce revolver capacity to $2 billion from previous $2.75 billion. This is on the back of our recent successful issuance of over $1.6 billion of senior secured notes, showing our strong progress in minimizing refinancing risk. In fact, we have recently made some tactical decisions by monetizing some non-core assets to help further our deleveraging. During Q2, we are executing several real estate divestitures, resulting in approximately $115 million of cash proceeds, the majority of which will flow in Q2.
The sizable cash inflow for these transactions, coupled with the expected strong free cash flow in Q1, reaffirm our confidence in ending calendar year 2021 with financial net debt to EBITDA towards 5x , as well to end calendar 2022 with leverage of 4x . In the meantime, we remain committed to the partial IPO of our Brazil business. In light of the current economic volatility in Brazil, we continue to monitor the market conditions to identify an opportune window to execute our partial IPO. Due to local Brazilian regulation, we cannot offer further details at this time. Before I hand the call back to Sue, I would like to quickly touch on the recent transactions regarding our preferred shares and the simplification effect they are having on our capital structure.
For some time now, we have seen three keys to further unlocking shareholder value at Coty, growing our sales and profits, deleveraging our balance sheet, and the last being simplifying our capital structure. We have made great progress on the first two of these and have a clear path towards further improvement. During the first half of this year, our capital structure has become significantly more simplified through KKR's conversion of approximately 50 million preferred shares, combined with the subsequent redemption via two transactions of around 75 million KKR preferred shares in exchange for a roughly 14% stake in Wella. Make no mistake, these are positive developments for Coty. We understand these events, particularly the secondary offering that took place in early September, led to questions and volatility.
However, these developments were a net positive for Coty as well as for our shareholders, including significantly even further reducing the overhang of KKR's preferred shares ownership. Confirmation of the significantly higher value of Wella with approximately 40% appreciation versus the initial valuation, while also proving the liquidity of the asset. Freeing approximately $65 million of cash on the lower preferred dividend that we can use to further reinvest behind brands or use towards deleveraging. The redemption of these convertible shares implies several cents of EPS accretion annually. Let me now turn it back to Sue.
Thank you very much, Laurent. We continue to make strong tangible progress across our six strategic pillars in the first quarter, with many more milestones planned for fiscal 2022 and beyond. I will now walk you through some of these key quarter one highlights, and as a reminder, we will be covering each of these pillars and future initiatives in much greater detail next week, November 18th, at our Investor Day in New York City. Starting with our first strategic pillar, stabilizing our consumer beauty brands. This is a pyramid we hope many of you recognize. However, we believe it's important to remind each of you of our core consumer beauty brands and where they stand. I'm proud to say that we have a clarified view of the portfolio with each brand positioned in a clear price tier and competing against a defined competitive brand.
COVERGIRL, Rimmel, and the corollary in Germany, Manhattan brand, compete directly against Maybelline. Max Factor and Bourjois compete against L'Oréal Paris. Sally Hansen holds the unique position of providing an affordable alternative to nail salon services. As you all know, COVERGIRL has been our first area of focus within Consumer Beauty, and I'm very pleased with the success we are seeing today. COVERGIRL is the inventor of skin makeup and leads this high growth area in the U.S., which is nicely accretive to our cosmetics portfolio. This has been supported by our strong launch cadence of clean, vegan, and cruelty-free beauty products, including Clean Fresh Makeup and Lash Blast Clean Mascara.
In fact, we believe this renewed focus on clean makeup is further supporting our gains with key demographics as well as key retail partners such as Ulta, who is elevating COVERGIRL as a leading example of an established mass brand leading the path to Clean Beauty. I also want to note that Clean Beauty has the additional benefit of being margin accretive, with these key innovations carrying a higher price point. I'm proud to say that since our reboot of COVERGIRL at the end of March, the brand has gained market share in four of the last seven months, and we expect the momentum to continue. Importantly, COVERGIRL is finally gaining shelf space in total in the U.S., led by a key retailer, where the brand is significantly outperforming the cosmetics category and also improving productivity.
Just as we discussed during our strategic update in April, we are reapplying the COVERGIRL turnaround playbook to other consumer beauty cosmetics brands. We just launched our first clean makeup brand at Rimmel called Kind & Free. This makeup line is 100% vegan, cruelty-free, free from fragrance, mineral oils, and animal-derived ingredients. On this slide, you can see a brief ad showcasing the manifesto of this recent launch.
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Kind & Free is our biggest consumer beauty launch in fiscal 2022. Along with our retail partners, we believe this will truly be a game-changing innovation, and we have been very excited with the recent test results. While Kind & Free is still only in pre-launch phase, with a full national rollout and full media support going live in January, we are already beginning to see Rimmel sales at key retailers picking up in recent weeks. For Max Factor, we are seeing very positive trends as the visuals and new assets have now gone live. Starting in the U.K., Max Factor gained 20 basis points of market share in September. Across all customers, Max Factor is stable or gaining market share, which is a first for the brand in years. Similarly, in the Netherlands, the brand gained 50 basis points of share.
With the new brand positioning and campaign with Priyanka Chopra Jonas only starting in a couple of months ago, we are really encouraged to see that the brand is already stable or growing market share in over 75% of its markets. We plan to keep the momentum going in December as we continue to invest in media behind Max Factor. Moving to our next strategic pillar of accelerating luxury fragrances. As previously mentioned, we have some outstanding fragrance launches during the quarter, further supporting our success in this key category. Gucci Flora Gorgeous Gardenia is one of these great launches. Ultimately, our goal is to cement this fragrance within the top 15 global female fragrance icon, and the result of recent months across geographies, channels, and customers suggest that Flora is on track to reach this.
Globally, this is a first for us, with a key innovation seeing such strong immediate success across major geographies. In the U.S., it's already ranking number 1 since its launch across many of our key U.S. retail partners. Similarly, in the U.K., the fragrance is number 3 among female fragrances since its launch and supporting Gucci Flora as the number 8 overall female fragrance line in the U.K. In two of our key markets in continental Europe, Germany and Italy, Flora's sellout is also very strong, supporting the Flora line to be number 8 in Germany, while Gorgeous Gardenia is the number 1 female fragrance in Italy. The fragrance is also gaining strong traction in China, where it has been ranking as a top 10 female fragrance among our key brick-and-mortar retail partners, as well as on Tmall.
Within men's fragrances, we launched a Burberry Hero during the first quarter, where the fragrance is similarly seeing great success across all key regions, and the fragrance remains on track to be a global male icon. In the U.S., Hero has been the number 1 men's fragrance launch at many of our key retail partners since the launch, with its sellout results far exceeding our initial plans. In Italy, Hero has been a top 10 men's fragrance launch, ensuring the Hero line is the top 10 overall men's fragrance line. In Germany, Hero is already a top 20s men's fragrance line. In China, Hero is also now a top 10 male fragrance since launch at many of our key brick-and-mortar retail partners and on Tmall.
It's also encouraging to see that Hero is ranking top three in key travel retail locations where the launch is present. Moving on to the acceleration of our prestige makeup portfolio, we relaunched Kylie Cosmetics during July. Together with Kylie, we updated all of the cosmetic products, ensuring that each product was vegan, cruelty-free, with clean formulations. We have been very pleased with the performance of Kylie, both across channels and geographies since this relaunch. In fact, we have launched numerous collections that exceeded our initial targets. During the first quarter, the Birthday collection dropped and was one of the most successful collections ever. The recently launched A Nightmare on Elm Street collection also turned out to be one of the best ever Kylie Cosmetics collections. Kylie also introduced her highly anticipated baby line during the quarter.
This collection saw very strong sellout trends within the first moments of becoming available online, leading to over delivery relative to our initial plans. Importantly, these launches and drops brought in a very significant amount of consumers who are new to the brand. It's also important to note that with the relaunch, we have made Kylie Cosmetics significantly more productive than the initial range, with fewer SKUs, but delivering very high sellout. The success of Kylie does not stop with these recent collections, but can be further extended to the performance in brick and mortar, both in the U.S. and abroad in Europe. Kylie Cosmetics is performing exceptionally well in the U.K. at our retail partners, including the recent relaunch at Boots. Meanwhile, the recent launch across a number of Scandinavian markets with our retail partner, Kicks, was one of their best ever day one launches.
In U.S. brick and mortar, both skin and cosmetics sellout are up strong double digits year-over-year. All of this confirms the true omni-channel nature and global appeal of the Kylie brand. Moving to another of our Prestige makeup brands, Gucci Beauty. The growth continues to be phenomenal. Our Gucci makeup sales in the quarter tripling year-on-year. At the same time, sellout in the U.S. and China continues to grow in the triple-digit range. As we've continued to build the Gucci makeup assortment, face represents a very important opportunity for the brand. During the quarter, we launched the Gucci Cushion Foundation with beautiful and distinctive packaging, as you can see on this slide. The launch anchors Gucci Beauty in the most loyal, most profitable, and largest makeup category across Asia.
This has proven highly successful, as in China, the Cushion Foundation was one of the top-ranking luxury cushions with Tmall and at a key brick-and-mortar retailer. Moving to our next strategic priority of growing our skincare portfolio. Our revitalization strategy for Lancaster remains on track. While we saw some slowdown during August in Hainan due to a COVID resurgence in China, as cross-border restrictions eased during September, we saw a rebound in both traffic and, of course, sales. I'm also pleased to say that we are seeing a further strengthening of the skincare portfolio, which now makes up the majority of Lancaster sellout in Hainan. We view this as further evidence that the repositioning of Lancaster towards a full-fledged skincare brand is taking hold of this all-important prestige skincare market. Moving to our fourth strategic priority of building e-com and direct-to-consumer.
We continued to experience very strong growth, with e-com rising 23% year-over-year. Both Prestige and Consumer Beauty saw growth exceed 20%. On a total company basis, e-commerce represented a mid-teens percent of revenue at the end of the first quarter, up from a low teens percent from last year's first quarter. One of the key e-commerce highlights during Q1 was our performance at Ulta, driven particularly by the strength we are seeing on luxury fragrances. Our Prestige fragrances sellout growth online at Ulta rose strong double digits with penetration in the high teens. During the quarter, Marc Jacobs' Perfect had outstanding performance. This icon was chosen as the fragrance crush in August, supporting triple-digit sellout growth for the month despite lapping last year's launch.
As we build on our e-commerce momentum, our multi-pronged focus on fueling growth at pure players, brick and click, and DTC is clearly bearing fruit. Moving now to our fifth strategic priority of expanding in China. As I previously mentioned, the country did see some resurgence of COVID during the quarter, primarily towards the end of July and August, with improvements in September. I'm pleased to say that despite this mixed backdrop, our China sales grew close to 50% in Q1. Amongst the top 10 Prestige Beauty companies in China, Coty's sellout was again the fastest-growing. This is in part supported by the momentum of Gucci and Burberry on Tmall, which led to a 7x growth in our Tmall revenues.
In addition, Chloé continues to be a standout performer, with sell-out doubling year-over-year, led by the ultra-premium fragrance collection, Atelier des Fleurs. This achievement is particularly notable given the limited amount of media support that we have given Chloé Atelier des Fleurs. However, we remain very committed to further building on this success to become a more significant player within ultra-premium and artisanal fragrances in China as well as across the globe. That now brings me to our outlook for the year. Starting with our view on first half fiscal 2022. As we have detailed, we saw very strong Prestige revenue growth in Q1 at 34% like-for-like growth, which in particular was amplified by the shipment of the key fragrance launches I have just discussed. Yet at the same time, we estimate our Prestige sell-out growth in Q1 was closer to the mid-teens.
In Consumer Beauty, we estimate sell-in and sell-out were relatively aligned in the low- to mid-single digits. As a result, the total Coty sell-out in Q1 was a little over 10%. Given the strong cost reductions and profitability in Q1, we intend to reinvest more in marketing spend in Q2 to further boost our sell-out during this critical holiday period, capitalizing on the unprecedented momentum our brands are seeing. We therefore expect our Prestige sell-out in Q2 to accelerate to high-teens growth with sell-in a bit below sell-out following the Q1 pipe fill. We also expect Consumer Beauty sell-out to accelerate to mid- to high-single digits with sell-in in line to better. In total, this should drive low-teens like-for-like growth in Q2 with sell-out a bit higher.
From a profit perspective, our strong growth margin and profit growth in the first quarter is further enabling us to fuel the growth investment in Q2. As a result, we expect to deliver first half fiscal 2022 EBITDA growth in the low 20s year-on-year, with EBITDA margins up approximately 100 basis points versus first half of fiscal 2021. It's important to stress that our key brands in both Prestige and Consumer Beauty are accelerating and in a unique momentum, which happens once in a decade, and we will not miss this unprecedented opportunity to gain market share and to lead and preempt new businesses in key regions.
We therefore need to invest to secure our near and mid-term growth that will be more and more profitable given the high margin nature of these new businesses, and our outstanding profit delivery in Q1 is allowing us to do just that. Moving to full year guidance now. We now expect fiscal 2022 like-for-like growth of low to mid-teens above our prior guidance of low teens growth. Please keep in mind, our guidance assumes no significant deterioration in regard to a resurgence of COVID and resulting restrictions or lockdowns. As we previously noted, while we have managed inflation and supply chain related headwinds quite well to date, we will of course continue to monitor this situation.
We are confident that our growth margin attack plan, the creative innovations we are introducing, such as Rimmel Kind & Free or Gucci Flora, and the continued premiumization of our portfolio will fuel growth margin expansion for the year as compared to fiscal 2021. Altogether, we expect fiscal 2022 adjusted EBITDA of $900 million at a minimum as we are intentionally reinvesting our growth margin gain and cost savings in our brands to maximize value and drive sustained momentum for the business into second half and of course beyond. I'm also very pleased to announce that with significant progress made in simplifying our capital structure, that we are now in a position to provide EPS guidance.
We've been very focused on getting a more solid handle on our underlying EPS and believe providing this level of guidance is an important milestone as we work toward becoming a more simplified company. With that said, we target adjusted EPS of $0.19-$0.23 for fiscal 2022. Lastly, we continue to expect to end calendar 2021 with leverage toward 5x and further reduce this to leverage of around 4x by the end of calendar 2022. To conclude, we entered fiscal 2022 with a goal of further building upon the great success we delivered last year. We ended Q1 with sales ahead of our guidance, while also delivering very strong gross margin expansion, both sequentially and versus last year in a volatile inflation and supply chain backdrop.
As a result, we were able to not only reinvest in our growth initiatives, but also drive adjusted EBITDA growth. Our Q1 exemplifies what we intend to do through this year, as well as the virtuous cycle we have created with strong sales and gross margin fueling our profit and reinvestment. Of course, we have no intention of slowing down our progress, and we remain committed to aggressively executing on our strategic priorities. We intend to continue to demonstrate the tangible strides we are making across each pillar. We believe our brands are in a very unique position, which does not come around often, and we fully intend to invest behind these brands and capitalize on the momentum we are seeing today.
I very much look forward to providing even more detail on our strategy and our objectives at our Investor Day on November 18th, to be held at the New York Stock Exchange. Thank you very much for your time today. We are now happy to take your questions.
At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press the star and one on your touchtone phone. You may remove yourself from the queue at any time by pressing the pound key. Once again, that is star and one if you would like to ask a question. We will take our first question from Steffi Wissink with Jefferies. Your line is now open.
Thank you. Good day, everyone. We wanted to just unpack gross margins a bit more, came in quite a bit stronger than we would have expected. Maybe, Sue, the question for you is, as you look across the portfolio, can you give us a little bit more insight into where you're seeing that margin strength? Then I think as a follow-up, Laurent, if you could just talk through some of, or help us quantify some of the key drivers. I think you listed five or six items that were contributing to the strength. If you could just help us contextualize where the bigger pieces were maybe versus some of the minor pieces. Thank you.
Let's start with the first part. Thank you. Again, we are pleased very much with this gross margin performance in the quarter with, as you said, it's 500 basis points of improvement year-over-year, and up 250 basis points from last quarter. This performance was driven by a number of different, I would say, factors. Of course, the first one, and it's something that I've been insisting on since me joining Coty one year ago, a more favorable mix, both from upside growth from Prestige, as well as a favorable product mix within the different categories. If you take the example of Consumer Beauty, we've been operating on makeup, on mascara, which are more accretive and more profitable categories than lip color, for example.
We've done a good work in terms of lowering E&O, and this is clearly in sync with the ability to say these are the products behind which we're going to put our money in terms of media. Let's raise the volumes and we'll meet this, I would say, new volumes raised because we are precisely investing behind what's doing well. The other initiative that helps us a lot is the high ROI initiative, as Laurent mentioned. Fixed cost absorption on the increased sales, this is another element. Pricing and revenue management, supply chain productivity, and of course, material cost reduction program. All these elements altogether helped us to do this, I would say, strong improvement on gross margin. Laurent, maybe.
Yeah. Steph, I can add a few words. Indeed, as Sue explained, I mean, we are very disciplined in this gross margin. Indeed there are two big categories. The number one is exactly what Sue has explained. It's really what we are doing on E&O, on productivity, on fixed cost. You saw already the result last year, because last year we were already back, you know, even better versus fiscal 2019 and, you know, above 60%.
We are really continuing this trend, but where we are really anticipating the effort is what I would call, is really on the value part of the gross margin, which is really, you know, the part above where exactly what Sue explained is really the mix, and this is really something to continue and which we will amplify, is the revenue management and obviously is also pricing. The recipe on the, you know, the cost part remains the same, but definitely on the value part, this is what we are really amplifying. We started, and we will do even more in H2. Just one last element to keep in mind is that, yeah, we are gonna continue this gross margin expansion all across the year.
Still keep in mind the gross margin in H2 is always lower versus H1, which is, you know, the typical seasonal pattern that we have in the industry.
We will take our next question from Robert Ottenstein with Evercore. Your line is now open.
Great. Thank you very much, and congratulations on a terrific quarter. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about, you know, what, how 11-11 is shaping up. You know, a lot of seasonality in China, and despite that, you did extremely well. How that's shaping up, as well as travel retail. Then just on the cash flow side, perhaps talk about the seasonality of the cash flow and the fact that even in Q1, the cash flow was so strong. Do you expect that to continue throughout the year? Thank you.
Good morning, Robert. Thank you for the question. Again, you've seen the results we've posted around China, 50% of growth. This is really a great, I would say, demonstration and KPI in terms of what we have put in place, in terms of the number of brands we're going to focus on, in terms of our ability to take, you know, a significant amount of sales on Tmall, creating the right content behind the right brands with the right media investment. What I can tell you is that the sales momentum that we've seen during the first quarter is tracking in line to better than Q1 in the second quarter. Clearly this will help us to do a strong execution into 11/11 in China.
On the free cash flow, Laurent, maybe you can take that one, please.
Yeah, absolutely. Robert, and you're right, really to focus on this. As I mentioned, indeed. Usually Q1, I would say is a weaker quarter in terms of cash flow generation, because indeed this is a quarter where we are building inventory for Q2. Yes, this is what we are doing, but at the same time, you see in Q1 the results of all the initiatives that we have kicked off already a year ago, which is really a full program on cash flow optimization, where we are working on 10 specific streams. I will not go in all the detail, but it's really that, you know, going through all the working capital items. One of them is inventories.
We are now with better tracking and better monitoring the forecast accuracy on the demand. You know, by doing that, in fact, we were able to optimize our inventory level while keeping at the same time a very good service level. This is really something. We are doing the same on the receivables with optimization on overdues and also on all the working capital. This is really what you see, the result in Q1 of all these initiatives, and indeed we see the very great output and it confirms that's why we are confirming that our target, you know, to move towards the 5x leverage by end of calendar 2021. We are fully confident and you know, this objective is gonna be reached.
Now, on total year fiscal year 2022, we are not giving guidance on free cash flow, but definitely based on what I have just explained and combined of course with the growth and combined also with the EBITDA that we are delivering, we feel good that fiscal year 2022 free cash flow should be nicely higher than fiscal 2021.
We will take our next question from Andrea Teixeira with JP Morgan. Your line is now open.
Yes, thank you. Good morning. Just a clarification on the gross margin bridge. I remember we were talking about pricing, as you saw opportunity to take more actions even prior to COVID with these RGM initiatives. How much list pricing did you take in the quarter and when you start to lap those price increases? And my other real question is, the SG&A ratio that did come in below expectations. Understanding that the team has emphasized the brand reinvestment remains a key focus for the company. Is there any seasonality we should be thinking of as you guide us for at least $900 million in EBITDA? And what is driving this SG&A leverage overall, please? Thank you.
Definitely, yes. On pricing, these are indeed initiatives that we kicked off already last year because I mean these I would say commodities inflation is not coming as a surprise. We flagged it already a few quarters ago, so that's why we initiated definitely you know some price increase. As Sue explained you know several times I mean we are really in a industry you know we are you know highly desirable brands and also all the investments that we are doing and all the great assets. Thanks to that I mean we can afford and we can implement indeed some price increase definitely in our business. We continue this and we are on track to take even more pricing initiatives in H2.
Again, all this is really planned. As I said, we knew that, you know, there will be some material inflation and we know also that it's still to continue in H2. We have also the plans really to intensify and to accelerate this price increase in H2. On SG&A ratio below expectations, I will really make it in two parts. Number one is really the continuity of the work we kicked off last year. It means that we have very strict plans and it's part of All In to Win, really optimizing a lot of our fixed costs and non-people cost also like business services. Here we are continuing.
At the same time, we are making sure that even in the SG&A, that we are reallocating some resources and we are also investing in the growth pillars, either markets, I mean, we mentioned about China, for example. We are making sure that we are investing also in SG&A in China or also in the key strategic pillars that Sue has explained. Again, it's not only when you go through SG&A, you know, it's not only one bucket. We are making sure that, you know, these are different areas and we are keeping good discipline, but at the same time investing where we need to invest. This is definitely the way we monitor our fixed cost.
On A&CP, the plan is to maintain, you know, roughly similar to Q1, you know, mid- to high 20s% through the year.
We will take our next question from Steve Powers with Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.
Yes. Hey, good morning. Thank you very much. Maybe picking up on that thread a little bit. The momentum on the top line is very evident. It's fantastic. The positive mix you talked about is also evident, making progress on productivity. Those are on the plus side of the ledger. On the other hand, you know, cost inflation is real. The cost of, I'm assuming, bolstering your supply chain has also picked up a bit. When you talk about investing incrementally for your brands in the year, can you frame for us how much additional flexibility and incrementality you have in the plan as it stands today versus where you were when the plan started given the momentum? I'm a little bit.
Just trying to understand how much incremental, again, incremental flexibility you have to invest behind brands to fuel further growth. Thank you.
I can start really to give you a frame and indeed Sue can build on this. Again, to give you the frame and you see the Q1 results that we are over-delivering on EBITDA. We are over-delivering on profit because as we have just explained, thanks to gross margin and thanks to SG&A discipline. We are delivering a very strong quarter, but we are not giving, you know, guidance quarter by quarter. We are giving the guidance on the fiscal year, on the total year. We say that, you know, we will deliver $900 million EBITDA at minimum, because we are very intentional on reinvesting behind our brands and where we have stronger ROI.
What I'm telling you is really to answer your point is that, yes, we have the flexibility, and we are creating ourselves our own flexibility. You see it in Q1. Then we decide with Sue and with the management team on a regular basis, okay, where, you know, we have the stronger ROI, and we are allocating the resources when there is very strong ROI. I can tell you, of course, and this is what Sue was explaining, that now we have a lot more and more initiatives with very strong ROI. Where on the other hand, you know, sometimes we can see that, you know, some tests and so on are not at the level we're expecting.
We are also very disciplined that we keep the money and then, you know, we reallocate to activities where, you know, there is a better return on investment. Yeah, let's be very clear, we have the flexibility, we are creating our own flexibility, and we are very intentional on reinvesting behind our brands.
We'll take our next question from Lauren Lieberman with Barclays. Your line is now open.
Great, thanks. Good morning. You run through a bunch of the recent successes in Consumer Beauty and, you know, the success you're seeing early indications of with the relaunch of the major brands and repositioning. Sales are still tracking kind of like, I think it's like 80-ish% of where they were in the first quarter of 2020, while Prestige is comfortably above where you were back then. Just curious if you could share whether it's, you know, recent performance of some of the other brands that are not kind of growing as fast as those that have been repositioned, or is it market recovery related? Kind of what you see is the impediment to getting back up to that fiscal 2020 benchmark for Consumer Beauty. Thanks.
Good morning, Lauren. Thank you for the question. In fact, what I would like to say is that I think we are in a way having figures that are in parity with what peers with Consumer Beauty businesses and mass cosmetic businesses have been posting. What we are seeing today is that the momentum behind COVERGIRL, which is the largest brand of Consumer Beauty, is holding, and I would even say is accelerating. COVERGIRL is growing both in selling and in sell out during the quarter. The recent weeks of Nielsen's that you may have seen post-quarter are showing four weeks of market share gain, including a strong 0.8% market share gain recently. There is a lot more to come behind COVERGIRL for Q2 and probably for the remainder of the year.
On Max Factor, again, I've been describing the success we are seeing. It's just the beginning because we are just starting to see the visibility in stores and online and on TV of the new, I would say, repositioning. Already with this, we are seeing market share improvement in 70% of our markets. Rimmel, which has secured its number one position in U.K. already with, you know, prior to the relaunch of the brand, has been doing a fabulous launch with Wonder'Extension and mascara that's one of the best-selling mascaras on Rimmel since many, many years. We just put on the market a few weeks ago, Kind & Free, which is the, I would say, the implementation of the recipe of success of COVERGIRL into Rimmel, which is the number one brand in U.K. and in many countries.
Kind & Free is starting outstandingly well. We just received the test results of the advertising that I've been sharing with you a few minutes ago. Again, we are constantly, and that's the good news, breaking, I would say, the records in terms of beating the best KPIs. We are super confident that we are going to see an acceleration in Q2 in Consumer Beauty, that's for sure. There is nothing today that I can share with you that would be, in a way, a disappointment versus what we have envisioned or versus the work that we have been putting behind the brands. Every time we put repositioning, advertising, media pressure, et cetera, we see it delivered. It's just a question of time, and you will see an acceleration in Q2.
Once again, that is star one, if you would like to ask a question. We'll take our next question from Olivia Tong with Raymond James. Your line is now open.
Great. Thank you. Innovation really progressed well to drive the recovery, particularly in prestige. Can you just talk a little bit about the innovation pipeline and how the development process has changed in recent years? Then I just wanna follow up on Steve's question a little bit. Can you just quantify how much cost-
How much higher are costs versus your plans going into the year? To the extent there are profit upsides as the year progresses, do you have bigger projects planned for that upside? Because you're already at 22% of sales on A&CP. I'd imagine it's not gonna go much higher than that. Thanks.
Yeah. Good morning, Olivia. Let me start with the first part of the question around the innovation pipeline and how the process has changed in the recent year. As you know, we've been putting in place a 6-pillar strategy. The 2 first points of this strategy were, number one, stabilizing our Consumer Beauty business, starting with our cosmetics brands in Europe and in the U.S. The second part was to how can we accelerate the growth in the Prestige division, which we have demonstrated during this first quarter at over 30% growth. This had three parts. Number one, accelerating our fragrance momentum and building a female top 10, top 15 fragrance, which seems going to be the case with Gucci Flora.
Confirming our leadership position in male prestige fragrances, and this seems to be also the case with the Hero, Burberry Hero, and Calvin Klein Defy, big successes. Adding a new growth engine, which is Gucci makeup, Burberry makeup, Kylie Cosmetics, and the three brands are outstandingly growing. If you think about Gucci makeup, it's triple-digit growth. In a way, what you are seeing today in terms of growth and the way we are operating behind innovation is very, very easy to understand if you look back at the two key first points of the strategic pillar. We are really delivering behind what we have been describing in April, and that we'll be describing in much more detail next week in New York on November 18th.
This was for the first part of the question around how we are dealing with innovation into the company. Maybe, Laurent, you want to take the second part, which is around you know our inflationary impact on costs?
Yes, absolutely. Olivia, indeed on the again, I explained a few times a few quarters ago, what we raised is that indeed we were assuming a 50 basis point impact related to cost in our gross margin. And this is what I explained before, so that's why we you know already implemented some price increase already in H1, because we knew that you know this headwind will come. Now what we are seeing indeed is that there is some amplification, as we all know, on this inflation, and now it's about size of 110 basis point in our gross margin equation.
Here, same story, we have all the plans in place, and what I explained before is that we have proactive efforts on pricing that we are gonna implement in H2 fiscal 2022 to keep mitigating inflation, but also, you know, completely consistent with our journey of value creation, with a creative innovation and, you know, building a better and healthier business.
To complement Laurent's point, I would really say that, you know, the pricing power of the company has been very well demonstrated during the quarter. As most of the, you know, innovations behind Clean Beauty and mass or behind, you know, the new fragrance launches, makeup, they are all very, very strongly accretive to the profitability of the company. Really they're even sometimes being very, very premium to the market. The innovations are highly delivering in terms of sell-outs, which really is a great confirmation of the desirability and the ability to price up our brands.
We will take our last question from Carla Casella with JP Morgan. Your line is now open.
Hi. Just wanted to see how much for the cost savings that you achieved in the quarter, and if you've got any update on the timeframe of the $600 million cost savings achievement. Then also, does your leverage target by the end of calendar 2021 and 2022 include the add back for the go forward, the remaining cost savings?
Okay. Yeah. Thank you, Carla. On cost savings, indeed, the 600 savings is that we delivered last year, as you remember, $314 million savings. This year, we are confirming to deliver $19 million savings and the rest will be in fiscal 2023. The $600 million savings will be delivered by end fiscal 2023. This is a plan we announced more than a year ago. As you could see, we are perfectly on track, even better on this savings. With a very strong Q1, we delivered $60 million in Q1, and we are confirming the $90 for this year.
What I want to insist also related to the savings is also with one-off costs, which are lower versus the initial plan, and this is also a big lever to optimize our cash. Perfectly on track and with very strong actions on fixed cost, on trade terms and also on all the items on COGS, and it's part of the gross margin. On number 2, which is the leverage target. Yeah, very good question. When we are saying towards 5x, this is just, I mean, EBITDA and net debt. There is no add back in this calculation. The add back is something that we are using only for the covenant calculation, and then it's a different number.
I'm insisting here that indeed towards 5x end of calendar 2021 and towards 4x end of calendar 2022 is excluding add-backs from these savings plans.
Great. Thank you.
We have no further questions on the line at this time. I will turn the call back over to Ms. Nabi for any additional or closing remarks.
Thank you everyone for your questions, and we are super excited to see you next week in New York on the 18th. A lot of things, you know, that are new that you'll be super happy to discover about, you know, our potential growth in the coming months and years. Thank you very much.