Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. This is Olga Levinzon, Coty's Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you for joining us today for the prepared remarks portion of Coty's second quarter fiscal 2023 earnings. Later this morning, at approximately 8:15 A.M. Eastern Time, we will hold a separate live Q&A session on today's results, which you can access via our investor relations website. Joining me this morning for our presentation are Sue Nabi, Coty's CEO, and Laurent Mercier, Coty's CFO. Before I hand the call over to Sue, 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 financials results and Coty's expectations reflect certain adjustments as specified in the non-GAAP financial measures section of the company's release. Thank you. I will now turn it over to our CEO, Sue Nabi.
Thank you, Olga. Welcome, everyone. The Q2 results that we have reported this morning mark the tenth consecutive quarter of results in line to ahead of expectations, even as we continue to navigate a very complex external environment. In a time when inflation, recessionary concerns, and geopolitical uncertainty dominate headlines, consumers continue to turn to beauty products to elevate their mood, boost their self-confidence, express their individuality, and support their desire for self-care. The fragrance index, as we like to call it, remained in full effect during the holiday season as consumers purchased the fragrances for others and for themselves as an affordable luxury in a time of financial uncertainty. We once again delivered another quarter of balanced growth consistent with our objectives. We reported like-for-like growth across both divisions, across each of our regions, and across our key categories, including fragrances, cosmetics, and body care.
This has allowed us to again report sales growth above the underlying beauty market. As a result, we continue to target growing our sales ahead of the beauty market, growing our profit ahead of sales, and steadily deleveraging our balance sheet, positioning Coty to become a true beauty powerhouse. I would like to call out a few highlights from our results. First, we once again delivered revenue growth ahead of expectations and guidance, fueled by the strong beauty demand and key brand initiatives in both divisions. Our Q2 like-for-like revenues grew 4%, and adjusting for our exit from Russia, our core business grew 7% like-for-like. This brought our first half core business like-for-like sales growth to 9%, ahead of our guidance for 6%-8% growth.
Second, we delivered another quarter of strong gross margin expansion, strong profit growth, and net debt reduction, allowing us to reach our calendar 2022 leverage target. Our Q2 adjusted gross margins increased 90 basis points year-on-year, while our Q2 adjusted operating income grew 11% year-on-year, despite a high single-digit negative impact from Forex. Importantly, we delivered on a key milestone in our deleveraging trajectory as our net debt declined by approximately $350 million to below $3.9 billion, and our leverage ended at roughly 4 x in line with our leverage guidance for calendar 2022. This reinforce our confidence in reaching the next critical milestone in driving our leverage towards 3 x exiting calendar 2023. Third, we continue to execute and make progress across our strategic growth pillars.
Finally, we remain confident in delivering on our fiscal 2023 revenue and EBITDA guidance, which is in line with our medium-term growth targets. We are increasing our fiscal 2023 adjusted EPS outlook, which we now expect to grow over 20% growth versus last year. 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. Starting with our revenue performance. Following Q1, when consumer beauty significantly outgrew prestige, primarily due to the pipe fill of body care launches in Q2, our divisional growth was more closely aligned as anticipated. At the same time, we also saw close alignment between the revenue growth and the retail sales growth in both divisions, with inventory levels at retailers in healthy shape exiting Q2.
Specifically, our Q2 revenue grew 4% like-for-like, reflecting 7% core business like-for-like growth when adjusted for our exit from Russia. This brings our first half core business revenue growth to +9%, ahead of our 6%-8% like-for-like growth guidance. In Q2, our prestige business grew 3% like-for-like, or 6% like-for-like when adjusted for the Russia exit. For the first half, the prestige division grew 5% like-for-like, or 8% when adjusted for the Russia exit. As anticipated, industry-wide supply constraint in key fragrance components, such as glass bottles, and to a lesser extent, pumps and caps, were the main limitation to our prestige business in terms of both revenues and sell out.
The division also faced difficult comparisons in the 1st half, as our innovation pipeline this year was composed primarily of brand extensions versus blockbuster launches last year. The good news is that with retailers exiting Q2 with lean inventory levels, fragrance demand maintaining its healthy growth, and component supply constraints beginning to improve, this sets a favorable backdrop as we enter the second half of fiscal 2023. In consumer beauty, the second quarter revenue grew 6% like-for-like, in line with our sellout growth, bringing the like-for-like growth in the first half to roughly 9%. When adjusted for the Russia exit, consumer beauty grew 8% like-for-like in Q2, and 10% in the first half. Geographically now, I'm very pleased to say that the like-for-like revenues continued to grow in all regions.
Revenues in the Americas grew 8% like-for-like in Q2, and grew 7% like-for-like in the first half, as we saw strong momentum in Brazil, Latin America, and regional travel retail channels, while the continued strength in U.S. consumer demand was counterbalanced by supply constraints, particularly in prestige fragrances. EMEIA sales grew 2% like-for-like in Q2, and 6% in the first half of fiscal 2023, despite roughly 500 basis points of negative impact from the Russia exit. We saw sales growth across most markets, and particularly strong momentum in regional travel retail as the weaker Euro attracted international travelers. Asia Pacific revenues grew 2% like-for-like in Q2, and 6% in the first half of 2023, with strong momentum in Asia, excluding China and travel retail. I will now hand the call over to Laurent to take you through our financial results.
Thank you, Sue. The external environment during our second quarter remained complex as we continue to face volatile Forex rates, future interest rate uncertainty, component shortages within prestige fragrances, COVID-related lockdowns in China, as well as unpredictability regarding the 2023 macroeconomic backdrop. Despite this uncertain environment, I'm pleased to say that we continue to deliver strong performance across all key financial KPIs, including gross margin, profit, and deleveraging. Let's start with our gross margin performance in the quarter, as we delivered significant expansion in both Q2 and the first half despite inflation and less favorable mix. Q2 adjusted gross margin of 65.5% increased by 90 basis points from last year, bringing the first half gross margin to 64.8%, up 80 basis points year-over-year.
Our Q2 gross margin was supported by the full quarter benefit from the pricing actions we took exiting the summer in both prestige and consumer beauty, averaging mid-single digits across the portfolio. The gross margin momentum was also fueled by supply chain productivity and improvements in excess and obsolescence. These improvements more than offset the cost inflation, which temporarily moderated to below one of the fifty basis points of revenues in Q2 due to the timing of pricing impact from certain material costs. As the contract on these materials reset in Q3, we expect inflation to remain at approximately 2% of sales in the second half of the year. Going forward, we will continue executing on our multi-pronged, multi-year gross margin attack plan as we drive our gross margins to the mid-sixties and beyond.
Let me now give you an update on the global supply and inflationary backdrop, including the industry-wide component shortages within prestige fragrances, as well as how we are navigating through this difficult environment. As we spoke about last quarter, the continued robust demand for fragrance, which had not been fully anticipated by the supply chain, has resulted in industry-wide shortages in key fragrance components. The biggest constraints have been felt in glass bottles, though the supply of fragrance caps and pumps has also been limited. In light of these component limitations and the seasonally higher fragrance volume demand in Q2, our prestige service levels declined moderately in Q2 compared to Q1 and remained below 80%. Against this difficult backdrop, we were able to deliver revenues ahead of guidance and strong gross margin growth.
The good news is that in January, we have already begun to see an improvement in our prestige service levels, aided by the combination of seasonally lower fragrance volume demand and a concerted effort by our supply chain team to systematically tackle the component constraints, concentrating on our top SKUs and lining up alternative sources for component supply. Finally, on inflation, while Q2 benefited from temporarily lower levels of inflation based on pricing locks we had in place, the repricing of these materials entering calendar year 2023, coupled with ongoing inflation in energy and labor in particular, suggests no change to our expectations for the year. Specifically, we continue to estimate COGS inflation of approximately 2% of revenues in fiscal 2023, with further inflationary pressure into fiscal 2024 materializing in SG&A.
We will maintain our steady and successful agenda of offsetting this inflation through a combination of pricing, COGS savings, and trade investment improvement. I will now provide an update on our All In to Win program. In Q2, we delivered savings of approximately $50 million, bringing our year-to-date savings to approximately $70 million. As savings ramp up from key initiatives, including our fragrance plant consolidation and material value analysis, we continue to target savings of approximately $170 million in fiscal 2023. Importantly, in the current macro environment, we want to position Coty for success both defensively and offensively.
Specifically, while we have seen no concrete signs so far of slowing demand for beauty products, we want to protect our profit and cash delivery in a variety of macro scenarios, while at the same time supporting a significant step up in our skincare investments in the coming quarters and years as we kick off this critical pillar of our strategy. We are increasing our fiscal 2024 savings target to approximately $90 million from our previously targeted $75 million, and have also identified savings projects of approximately $75 million in fiscal 2025.
The increase in our fiscal 2024 savings and the new fiscal 2025 savings targets are driven in large part by gross margin-related projects, including material value analysis as we continue to streamline sourcing and variability in non-value-added components like pumps and external packaging, deploying strategic revenue management programs and toolkits to additional markets, continuous improvement to our manufacturing plants and warehouses, and energy cost reduction at our facilities through solar panel installations. In addition to these gross margin savings, we expect to deliver savings in SG&A through further business service optimization, consolidation in warehouse operations, and optimizing purchasing of marketing materials. Having delivered close to $500 million of savings over the last two and a half years, we continue to optimize all of our processes and expenditures, thereby positioning Coty to be both flexible and fully equipped to invest in our strategic priorities.
Let me now walk you through our marketing investments. In Q2, ANCP investments represented over 27% of sales, increasing from Q1 level as we supported our initiatives during this critical holiday period. This brings the year-to-date ANCP level to approximately 26%, in line with our expectations. As with prior quarters, our marketing spend was concentrated behind key launches in prestige and consumer beauty, as well as white space opportunities. For the back half of fiscal 2023, we expect ANCP to remain in the high twenties level of sales, resulting in full fiscal 2023 ANCP also ending in the high twenties level of sales. Moving to our profit delivery for the quarter. Our Q2 adjusted operating income grew 11% to $261 million, with our first half operating income expanding a strong 17% year-on-year.
This delivery was particularly impressive given strong Forex headwinds which negatively impacted our Q2 and first half profit growth in the high single digits. Importantly, both divisions delivered double-digit operating income growth in the quarter. Our Q2 adjusted operating margin expanded by over 200 basis points to 17.2% with our first half margin up 270 basis points to 17.5%. On Adjusted EBITDA, we delivered 2% growth to $318 million, with 6% growth in the first half to $626 million. Our year-to-date Adjusted EBITDA margin reached 21.5%, up 150 basis points versus last year. This strong delivery puts us well on our way to our EBITDA objectives for the year.
Now moving to our adjusted EPS, which includes the following drivers: Adjusted EBITDA in Q2 of $318 million, depreciation of $56 million, net interest of $61 million, income tax of $68 million, representing an adjusted effective tax rate of roughly 25% due to some discrete benefits in the quarter. Diluted share count of 887 million, which is a mechanical result of GAAP rules on anti-dilution and the level of net income we reported this quarter. As a result, our Q2 diluted adjusted EPS was $0.22, including a positive impact of $0.05 from the mark-to-market on the equity swap.
As a reminder, the total return swap transactions that we have entered into with several bank counterparties have effectively locked in an attractive share price below $7.50 for targeted share buyback program of roughly $200 million during calendar 2024, as well as a share price of approximately $8.70 for another targeted share buyback program of approximately $200 million during calendar 2025. With a negative impact from the equity swap in Q1 and a positive impact in Q2, the mark-to-market benefit to our first half fiscal 2023 EPS was only $0.01. It is therefore very encouraging to report 27% growth in our year-to-date adjusted EPS to $0.33 or $0.32 excluding the equity swap, which was primarily driven by strong operational improvement, even in the face of significant Forex headwinds.
Looking ahead to Q3 and the remainder of fiscal 2023, I would like to provide some more context on the different drivers of our adjusted EPS. First, we continue to expect depreciation to be in the mid $200 million. Second, we continue to expect net interest for the year to also be in the mid $200 million. Third, we continue to expect an adjusted effective tax rate for fiscal 2023 in the high 20s%, assuming no significant changes in tax regulation. Finally, on fiscal 2023 share count, based on GAAP accounting provisions around anti-dilution, we continue to expect diluted shares at the 860 million-870 million range. Moving to our free cash flow. We generated $455 million of free cash flow in the quarter, in line with our expectations.
Year to date, we have generated a robust $543 million of free cash flow. The quarterly results reflected the seasonally strong cash generation period, coupled with good execution on receivables collection. For fiscal 2023, we continue to expect the free cash flow to be a little lower than last year due to one-time working capital benefits, which helped fiscal 2022 and will not repeat in fiscal 2023. In addition to our operating free cash flow, we also continued our trajectory of identifying tactical opportunities to monetize non-core assets and simplify the portfolio. At the end of Q2, we announced the divestiture of one of our smaller fragrance licenses, Lacoste, back to the fashion house.
While we will be winding down sales of the brand over the course of calendar 2023, we have already received the first tranche of proceeds from the license sales in Q2, totaling roughly $55 million. Our intent is to continue to use our free cash flow, our strong free cash flow and opportunistic asset monetization to actively reduce our debt and advance our deleveraging agenda. Moving to our capital structure. We ended Q2 with net debt of approximately $3.86 billion, an improvement of roughly $330 million from Q1, driven by our free cash flow and partial proceeds from the Lacoste license sale. As a result, our leverage at the end of the quarter was around 4.1 x, down from around 4.5 x at the end of Q1, and in line with our target of ending calendar 2022 with leverage towards 4 x.
We also took advantage of our debt trading at a sizable discount for 95% of par to buy back approximately $150 million of our 2026 unsecured notes. In the quarter, the book value of our Wella stake increased by roughly $75 million- $1.04 billion. Factoring in our Wella stake, we ended the quarter with economic net debt of approximately $2.8 billion. Given the rising interest rate environment, I would like to take a moment to remind everyone about Coty's exposure to this. Recall that approximately two-third of our debt is fixed rate notes, including hedging, roughly 90% of our debt is fixed. Even per the maturation of our hedges, which is occurring now, the vast majority, or approximately 70% of our debt, remains fixed.
Looking beyond fiscal 2023, our strong continued progress on deleveraging and debt paydown support our expectation for interest expense to steadily decline in the coming years, despite the currently rising interest rate environment. To sum up, we are incredibly pleased to have exited calendar year 2022 fully meeting our commitment to lower leverage to 4 x,, and we feel equally confident in our next major leverage milestone as we continue to target exiting calendar 2023 with leverage towards 3 x. I will now hand it back to Sue to review our strategic progress in the quarter.
Thank you very much, Laurent. As we have continued to update you quarter after quarter, in Q2, we continued to further execute on our six strategic pillars. Starting with our first strategic pillar, stabilizing and growing our consumer beauty business. Over the past quarter and past year, the global mass beauty market grew in the mid single digits year-on-year, broadly in line to ahead of historical trends. Following a very active brand repositioning calendar in calendar 2021, beginning with COVERGIRL, followed by Rimmel and then Max Factor, I'm pleased to say that we ended calendar 2022 delivering market share growth for the full year driven by these iconic brands, as well as smaller but growing contributors to the portfolio. I'm incredibly pleased with the fast pace with which we have been able to turn around our consumer beauty market share with many more exciting things to come.
It's worth noting that the reopening of the China market, where the market share of our consumer beauty brands is still quite low, may drive volatility in our reported global market share. In the past year, COVERGIRL's market share was pressured by shortages on the iconic LashBlast mascara and ensuing shift in our media investments to successful but smaller pillars. However, the brand's fundamentals have continued to improve with stronger brand equity, innovation performance, penetration gains with key demographics. I'm very pleased that entering Q3 we once again have the perfect alignment of exciting innovation, including the Clean Fresh Yummy Glosses and Clean Fresh color-correcting serums, a new campaign around the iconic LashBlast mascara to coincide with its fifteenth anniversary, and media support behind the top brand pillars.
Let's take a look at the new LashBlast campaign, which regroups for the first time all COVERGIRL's iconic ambassadors and is one of our best-testing ads.
I'm calling the COVERGIRLs. Hey. Hi, Queen. Hey, Queen. Hey. What you doing? You're back. I'm back. I hear LashBlast Volume is America's favorite mascara. It sure is. Try it.
10x more volume.
Mega. Check that out. Ooh, that's working.
Oh, hello lashes.
Time for your mascara face, girls.
Mm-hmm.
Celebrating 15 years of LashBlast Volume mascara. From easy, breezy, beautiful COVERGIRL.
The results are already visible in the latest Nielsen. With Rimmel, we have also seen great success across each key market. The brand gained global share in the last year and the last quarter, fueled by engaging brand activation successful launches, including Thrill Seeker mascara, which is the top-selling Rimmel mascara in every market it's in. Turning to Max Factor, the brand also gained global share in the last year and the last quarter, supported by its successful Miracle Pure Skin-Improving Foundation launch and the revamp of some of its iconic and value price, value priced pillars like the 2000 Calorie mascara, which jumped to the number two mascara spot in the U.K. after we relaunched it with new packaging and a new marketing campaign.
I also want to highlight our local Brazilian brands, Monange, Bozzano and Risqué, which after a stellar Q1, show no signs of slowing in either sales growth or market share gains, with all three brands growing 20%-30% in the quarter. Finally, on adidas, last quarter we began the brand repositioning, including the launch of the premium and sustainable Active Skin & Mind range in Central and Eastern Europe, where we have seen strong performance, particularly on the male shower gels. We are very excited about the opportunity ahead for adidas as we relaunch the brand in key European markets during the current quarter. Turning to our second pillar, focused on accelerating our luxury fragrance business. Consistent with the trends we have witnessed in the past year, we continue to see the fragrance index in full effect.
Even in the difficult macro backdrop where many consumers are making choices in their spending patterns, fragrances remain a standout category as they cater to consumers' desire for mood-boosting and well-being-oriented products. We continue to see increased fragrance usage by Gen Z, men and Hispanic consumers, further underpinned by social media. In the last quarter, demand for prestige fragrances across North America and Europe continues to grow in the high single digits, well above the historical low-to-mid single-digit growth of the fragrance market pre-pandemic. As a result, the fragrance market is 25%-30% higher than 2019. In markets like the U.S., the prestige fragrance market is over 50% higher than pre-COVID levels.
Once again, the market data confirms no slowing in the premiumization trend in fragrances with the premium plus and ultra-premium fragrance lines growing at 1.5x- 2 x the market level and higher concentration fragrances continuing to increase their penetration across all major fragrance markets. These dynamics manifested in our results as well, as we saw a high single-digit price mix growth in our prestige fragrance sales, with volumes slightly down when adjusted for the Russia exit, reflecting the component shortages that Laurent discussed in details. With the expected growth in fragrance consumption in China and further rebound in travel retail still ahead, we remain optimistic about the strong momentum ahead for the fragrance category. Against this very favorable fragrance market backdrop, we are continuing our track record of launching market-leading innovation, all while supporting our base business of key icons.
Let's take a minute to watch the new TV campaign for BOSS The Scent Magnetic, which captures the codes of the recently relaunched Hugo Boss brand in this Gen Z-focused fragrance line.
BOSS The Scent Magnetic. For him. For her.
More broadly, we continue to drive penetration and growth for the new pillars we launched in fall 2021, Gucci Flora Gorgeous Gardenia for women and Burberry Hero for men, both of which placed in the top five launches in our key markets. As you can see on this slide, the new extensions were launched in fall 2022, further amplified these franchises. Gucci Flora Gorgeous Jasmine ranks as a top three innovation in the U.K. and top five in the rest of our key markets. Burberry Hero Eau de Parfum ranks as a top three innovation in most key markets. Meanwhile, Burberry Her Elixir de Parfum has quickly become a top five innovation in the U.S.
The tremendous success of Burberry Hero fragrance franchise on the men's side and Burberry Her franchise on the female side has propelled the overall Burberry fragrance brand to the number 10 spot in the U.S. market, which is a phenomenal improvement of nine ranks versus last year. BOSS Bottled Parfum has not only served to premiumize the Hugo Boss brand, but has clearly resonated with consumers, ranking as a top two launch in key markets. These are just some of the examples of the successes we continue to deliver across our fragrance portfolio. I'm pleased with the performance we have delivered in our prestige fragrance business year-to-date, and this despite the supply constraints and an innovation pipeline consisting of primarily pillar extensions.
Importantly, we are delivering on our balanced growth agenda with revenues for each of these six brands growing in line to ahead of the fragrance market fiscal year to date. All of this reaffirms our view that Coty remains the leader in building strong and long-lasting fragrance brands and a high-growth and high-margin fragrance business with a very balanced portfolio of distinctive brands. On prestige cosmetics, while the overall business trends for Gucci and Burberry cosmetics were pressured by the lockdowns in China, we continued our strategic focus and expansion of these businesses. In the U.S., where the prestige cosmetics category grew in the low teens, our key prestige makeup brands, Gucci and Kylie, grew retail sales at over 40% or 3x the market level.
This exceptional growth reflects both continued distribution expansion and improving productivity, particularly as consumers are once again re-engaging with the lip category, which is a core pillar for both brands. As we've continued to expand our prestige makeup footprint in travel retail, particularly in Asia, it's very encouraging to see that our fiscal year to date prestige makeup sales in this critical channel are 7 x higher than they were pre-COVID and now roughly represent 10% of our global travel retail sales. This clearly speaks to the potential of our makeup brands as we target prestige makeup to reach approximately 10% of our overall portfolio in the medium term. On Kylie Cosmetics, the brand grew double digits versus last year, reflecting growing momentum on the DTC side and successful distribution expansion, including Macy's in the U.S. and top travel retail locations in Latin America and Europe.
Shifting now to our third strategic pillar, which is building our skincare business across both divisions. This is a key strategic objective for us, our journey really kicks off in the coming months. As we shared during our skincare strategic update investor event in September, next month, Lancaster will be launching its ultra-premium skincare line in China called Ligne Précieuse. We can see here a beautiful visual of one of the beautiful brand locations. We will be opening one of several in mainland China, Hainan, and travel retail channel. We will be supplementing these new counters with a full omni-channel approach, including a full launch on Tmall, followed by Douyin, P.R. road shows, and celebrity endorsers.
Importantly, with the lifting of China COVID restrictions, our key priority, Lancaster, perfectly coincides with the reopening of the China market and the desire of Chinese consumers to re-engage with and discover new beauty brands and products. At the same time, we are also revamping our philosophy skincare brand. In the coming months, as you will see more exciting things coming from philosophy in store, online, and across social media activations. Finally, on SKKN BY KIM, our focus continue to be on expanding the reach and trial of the brand. Importantly, as we are now roughly 6 months post-launch, we are encouraged to see that the repeat purchase rate is quite strong at over 20%. Moving to our fourth strategic pillar, digital and e-commerce. Overall, e-commerce sales grew modestly year-on-year, weighed down by lockdown related weakness in key Chinese e-commerce platforms and fragrance supply constraints.
At the same time, we have continued to fuel our digital momentum across key areas such as social commerce, e-retail, and of course, new partnerships. Let me share some of the highlights from the quarter. Despite overall declines in beauty sales on Tmall on Q2, our strong activations around Burberry drove strong momentum during the key 11/11 holiday, with Burberry sales on Tmall growing over 50%. On the social commerce side, several of our consumer beauty products have gone viral on TikTok, with content creators tapping into the dupe trend and highlighting the great results of our products at a much more affordable cost relative to comparable prestige offerings.
As we spotted an amplified creator content on Rimmel Stay Matte Pressed Powder, COVERGIRL newly launched Clean Fresh Yummy Gloss, and COVERGIRL's Clean Fresh Tinted Lip Balm, these TikTok videos have reached millions of views and helped propel strong uplifts in retail sales on these products, both in store and of course online. We are continuing our e-commerce distribution expansion, including the opening of Chloé flagship store on Tmall this month. Moving to our fifth strategic pillar, which is building our presence in China. Zero COVID restrictions which were in place for the entirety of Q2 weighed on both store traffic and consumer engagement with beauty and luxury categories online. This drove a double-digit decline in our China revenues in Q2, very much in line with the results reported by industry peers.
In the midst of these restrictions, we saw a number of bright spots year to date, including tremendous momentum in our top premium fragrance collections such as Chloé Atelier des Fleurs line and Burberry Signatures line, speaking to the accelerating penetration of the fragrance category and of course, ongoing premiumization amongst Chinese consumers, both trends which we expect to continue in the coming years. We also saw the continued sales growth in our consumer beauty brands, Max Factor and adidas, supported by the continued e-commerce activations. Entering Q3, the easing of COVID restrictions has already driven a significant rebound in consumer traffic in stores versus traffic levels last quarter, even though store traffic is still below prior year. You can see the return of consumers to our stores in the images on this slide.
What is clear is that while the reopening of the Chinese market and resumption of normal activity may not be linear, there is a clear appetite amongst Chinese consumers to reengage with key activities, whether it's travel, with flight to Hainan in early January already above last year's levels, visiting the local mall, or trying out the latest product launches. This market reopening is perfectly in sync with the key brand initiatives we've planned for the second half of our fiscal 2023. Whether it's the launch of Lancaster ultra-premium skincare line later this quarter, which will include a fully omnichannels approach across mainland China and Hainan, or the launch of Chloé on Tmall, which is occurring as we speak. The Chinese desire to reengage with beauty and with brands after months of severe restrictions should further propel the success of these initiatives.
Finally, we are continuing to see incredible momentum in our travel retail sales. Both in Q2 and year to date, our travel retail sales grew approximately 40%. As a result, our travel retail sales are now approximately 8% of our overall business. This is consistent with our travel retail penetration in 2019, even though international travel is still over 20% below pre-COVID levels. We have continued to gain share in high growth and highly profitable travel retail channel, particularly in EMEA and the Americas, fueled by distribution expansion, travel relaunch, travel retail launch exclusivities, successful innovations, and our growing multi-category presence. With no signs of slowing in global consumers' appetite for travel, coupled with the return of Chinese travelers in the coming quarters, we remain highly optimistic about the growth potential of this channel for the beauty industry as a whole and Coty in particular.
That brings me to our outlook for the remainder of the year. As mentioned earlier, the fragrance component shortages which weighed on our Q2 are beginning to ease, resulting in an improvement in our service levels in January. I'm pleased to say that the combination of improved service levels and ongoing strength in beauty consumption has driven a sequential acceleration in our sales growth in Jan. As such, we continue to expect the second half of fiscal 2023 like-for-like sales growth of our core business, adjusting for the impact of the Russia exit, in line with our medium-term algorithm and previous outlook for 6%-8% growth. The net impact of our Russia exit is expected to negatively impact Q3 sales by roughly 2% with no impact in Q4.
Based on current rates, we expect Forex headwinds to sales in the mid-single % in Q3 and low single % in Q4. For total fiscal 2023, assuming no significant deterioration in the macro or COVID environment, we continue to expect like-for-like sales growth of the core business, adjusting for the impact of the Russia exit, in line with our medium-term growth target of 6%-8%. We expect impact from the Russia exit to be approximately 2% in fiscal 2023, with a Forex headwind on fiscal 2023 revenues towards the better end of our prior outlook for a 6%-8% headwind. We continue to expect modest gross margin expansion in fiscal 2023, with savings and pricing offsetting inflationary pressure.
As a result, assuming no significant macro deterioration, we continue to target fiscal 23 adjusted EBITDA of $955 million-$965 million based on current Forex rates, relatively in line with our medium-term growth target of +9% to +11%, adjusting for the impact of the Russia exit. Supported by strong EPS delivery in the first half, we now expect fiscal 23 adjusted EPS growth of over 20% to $0.35-$0.36, excluding any mark-to-market adjustments on the equity swaps, and of course, assuming no significant changes in the current tax regulations. This is an increase from our previous adjusted EPS guidance of $0.32-$0.33.
We also continue to anticipate adjusted EPS growth of approximately 20% in fiscal 2024 and beyond, skewed by lower interest expenses as part of our deleveraging efforts consistent with the medium-term targets we laid out at our investor day. We continue to target further reduction in leverage towards 3 times exiting calendar 2023 and roughly 2 times exiting calendar 2025. To sum up, I'm encouraged by our strong and consistent delivery over the past 2 and a half years, exceeding expectations in the majority of the quarters. We remain as confident in beauty as a structurally attractive category and the longevity of the fragrance index. Even in a scenario that global economic growth slows, Coty's business should outperform for 3 key reasons.
First, we are not yet in the mature phase of our growth evolution, with significant white space opportunities ahead, including skincare, China, travel retail, and prestige makeup. Second, our prestige division remains protected by the affordable nature of luxury beauty relative to much more expensive luxury goods. Third, our consumer beauty business is stronger than ever, offering consumers value with quality and desirable beauty products at an affordable price. I'm equally encouraged by the momentum in our social agenda, as we've just launched the hashtag #UndefineBeauty campaign, calling on English dictionary publishers to review and update their definition of beauty so that no one feels excluded by the definition or the examples that accompany it. In short, we are excited by the path ahead, and we continue on our journey to transform Coty into a true beauty powerhouse.
With that, sorry, let me open up the call for your questions.