Hello, 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 first quarter fiscal 2024 earnings. On Wednesday, November 8, 2023, at approximately 7:30 A.M. Eastern Time or 1:30 P.M. Central European Time, we will hold a separate live Q&A session on our results, which you can access via our investor relations website. Joining me for our presentation are Sue Y. 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 financial results and Coty's expectations reflect certain adjustments as specified in the non-GAAP financial measure section of the company's release. Thank you. I will now turn it over to our CEO, Sue Nabi.
Thank you very much, Olga. Welcome, everyone. I'm very happy to share that today's Q1 results again reaffirm the strength of Coty's financial, operational, and strategic performance. Once again, our sales growth was among the best in our peer set and ahead of the beauty market. These accomplishments are the results of the focus and agility across the full Coty organization as we continue to amplify our strengths, adjust to evolving market conditions, and capture new opportunities. Even in a complex macroeconomic environment, the beauty category remained resilient by offering consumers affordable luxury, self-care, and confidence-boosting. We continue to see consumers premiumizing in beauty, and the Fragrance Index we have been discussing for over a year remains fully in effect. Once again, we delivered another quarter of balanced growth with like-for-like growth in both divisions and across each of our regions.
As a result, we continue to target sales growth that is ahead of the beauty market, growing our profit ahead of sales, steadily deleveraging our balance sheet, and positioning Coty as a beauty powerhouse with still significant untapped potential. It has been a very exciting, and some might say, historic quarter for Coty as we embraced our European roots and footprint by dual listing on the Euronext Paris Stock Exchange to provide new European investors with the opportunity to join our accelerating growth, trajectory, and success. As we look forward, sorry, I'm extremely optimistic and excited about Coty's future. Let me now summarize the key messages from our results. First, we delivered market-leading revenue growth ahead of both expectations and raised guidance, fueled by the strength of the beauty category and Coty's successful icons and innovations.
In the first quarter, our like-for-like revenues grew 18%, which was ahead of our updated first half guidance of 10%-12% growth and outlook at the start of the quarter of 10% like-for-like growth. We saw particularly strong sales momentum in Prestige, driven by existing icons and new launches, coupled with strong 10% like-for-like growth in Consumer Beauty division. Second, we delivered strong profits despite reinvestments in the business and sustained COGS inflation, with adjusted operating income growing 21% year on year and adjusted EBITDA growing 17%. We remain on track to deliver leverage of 3x exiting calendar 2023 and approximately 2.5x exiting calendar 2024. Third, we continued to execute and make progress across our strategic growth pillars.
Finally, for the second time this fiscal year, we are raising our fiscal 2024 outlook, driven by the very strong Q1 delivery. We now expect to grow Like-for-Like revenues at +9%-+11%, driven by outperformance in Prestige, up from our recently raised outlook of +8%-10% in fiscal 2024 and ahead of our mid-term target range of +6%-+8%. Layering in modest gross margin expansion and 10-30 basis points of Adjusted EBITDA margin expansion, we now expect fiscal 2024 Adjusted EBITDA of $1.08 billion-$1.09 billion, as well as +16%-+25% Adjusted EPS growth, excluding the equity swap. I will now take a few moments to cover our revenue trends during the quarter before Laurent takes you through our financials.
Then, of course, I will finish with an update on our strategic progress and, of course, our outlook. Starting with our revenue performance, our Q1 like-for-like revenues grew 18%, significantly ahead of our raised guidance range for the first half of +10%-12%. In Q1, our prestige business grew 22% like-for-like. The very strong sales growth in Q1 was broad-based across all regions, and driven in particular by our leading fragrance brands, as we continue to see robust demand in the fragrance category across all markets, with growth further aided by the improvement in service levels. The momentum in prestige was fueled by outperformance in volumes, which grew by a double-digit percentage, coupled with pricing and mix.
Since we are in a period of strong seasonal demand, it's important to note that retailer inventories in key markets are at a healthy levels exiting the first quarter. In Consumer Beauty, revenue grew 10% like-for-like. Our Q1 Consumer Beauty growth came from acceleration in mass fragrances and solid growth in color cosmetics and skin and body care, with particular strength in North America and Latin America. Geographically now, all regions contributed to the strong like-for-like growth of 18% in the quarter. In Americas, like-for-like sales grew 17%, with double-digit percentage growth in every market and in regional travel retail. In the EMEA region, like-for-like revenues grew 18%, with most markets and regional travel retail delivering double-digit percentage growth in the quarter. In Asia Pacific, like-for-like revenues grew 19% in the first quarter, fueled by strong growth across most markets.
In the quarter, our Prestige revenues in China grew year-on-year, while Consumer Beauty revenues were lower as retailers worked down inventory. As you know it, we are focused on driving balanced growth across the portfolio. A critical piece of this balanced growth agenda is that our sales growth is supported by a combination of volumes, pricing, and mix. In Q1, we saw double-digit % volume growth in Prestige, fueled by the success of the core business, as well as new launches like Burberry Goddess, Gucci Flora Gorgeous Magnolia, and Boss Bottled Elixir. Volumes in Consumer Beauty remained stable. As a result, for the total company, volumes grew in the low single digits. In addition to strong volume growth, price grew an estimated high single digits, and mix and other grew in the high single digits.
Our intent is to continue to drive this balanced growth in the coming quarters and years, fueled by volumes, premiumized mix, and complemented by very targeted pricing. I will now hand the call over to Laurent to take you through our financial results.
Thank you, Sue. In the current macroeconomic environment, I am pleased to share that we continue to deliver strong financial performance, with the Q1 results marking the 13th consecutive quarter of operational results in line to ahead of expectations. Let's begin with an update on how we are managing the global supply chain, as well as our visibility into the inflationary environment. Last quarter, we reported improving service levels through expanded dual sourcing, detailed supply and demand planning, and building of safety stock. In Q1, Prestige and Consumer Beauty service levels exceeded expectations, reaching approximately 96% in the quarter. Turning to the inflationary backdrop, as anticipated, in Q1, COGS inflation remained high at approximately 2% of sales. We have been navigating these inflationary impacts through a combination of our execution on premiumization, mix management, and productivity, complemented by targeted price increases.
Importantly, looking to Q2 and second half fiscal 2024, we are now expecting COGS inflation to ease significantly, benefiting from stabilization in commodities and transportation inflation. I am proud and encouraged by our execution over the past year to achieve service levels ahead of plan and our ability to manage through an exceptional inflationary environment. I will now provide an update on our All-i n- to- Win program. In the first quarter, we delivered savings of approximately $35 million. Due to our very strong project pipeline, we remain on track to deliver over $100 million of savings in fiscal 2024, driven by material cost savings, including material value analysis and procurement, as well as structural agency savings. We also reaffirm our fiscal 2025 savings targets of $75 million.
In sum, having delivered over $630 million of savings life to date, we are continuing to optimize all of our processes and expenditures, which positions Coty to be both flexible and fully equipped to invest in our strategic priorities. Importantly, as we mentioned last quarter, we are in phase two of our transformation as we put in place additional enablers for sustainable growth and business accelerations across brands and markets, supplementing our savings initiatives to fuel profit expansion and reinvestment. Moving to our gross margin performance. Q1 adjusted gross margin of 63.5% was in line with our expectations, decreasing by 60 basis points from last year.
Our Q1 gross margin decrease was driven by elevated COGS inflation of approximately 2% of revenues carried over from fiscal 2023, a return to fragrance gift sets, which had declined in the mix last year due to significant supply chain constraints, and increased excess and obsolescence tied to the inventory build-up in the prestige business to support strong service levels. These impacts to gross margin were partially offset by pricing, positive mix management, and supply chain productivity in the first quarter. Going forward, we expect significant easing of COGS inflation in the second quarter and second half of fiscal 2024 to aid the year-over-year gross margin trajectory, which will support gross margin expansion in fiscal 2024. We will continue executing on our multi-pronged, multi-year gross margin attack plan as we drive our gross margin to the mid-sixties and beyond. Let me now walk you through our marketing investments.
In Q1, A&CP investments represented approximately 25% of sales, increasing 30 basis points from the prior year and in line with expectations as we continue to support our key initiatives. We targeted our media investments behind many of our most recent innovations, including the highly successful Burberry Goddess, Gucci Flora Gorgeous Magnolia, and Boss Bottled Elixir in Prestige, as well as CoverGirl Cleantopia Mascara and Rimmel Thrill Seeker line in Consumer Beauty. We are continuing to shift media spend toward digital and social media activations, which now account for a majority of our media spend. We continue to expect A&CP to be in the high 20s% level of sales in fiscal 2024. Moving to our profit delivery for the quarter. Our Q1 adjusted operating income grew a strong 21% to $302 million.
The Q1 adjusted operating margin of 18.4% grew 40 basis points year-over-year, fueled by operating leverage on fixed cost and depreciation expense. We continue to expect strong income growth and margin expansion going forward. Our Q1 adjusted EBITDA grew 17% year-over-year to $360 million, with the adjusted EBITDA margin decreasing 20 basis points year-over-year. That brings me to our adjusted EPS. Our Q1 diluted adjusted EPS of $0.09 includes a negative non-cash EPS impact of $0.06 from the mark to market on the equity swap due to the stock price decline in the first quarter. Excluding the swap, our adjusted EPS totaled $0.15, which was stable year-on-year.
Our Q1 EPS was negatively impacted by a change in the Swiss statutory tax rate, which occurred at the end of the quarter, which resulted in a one-time non-cash tax impact of $24 million or $0.03 per share. Looking ahead to fiscal 2024, I would like to outline certain drivers of our adjusted EPS. First, we expect depreciation to be in the $230 million-$240 million range. Second, we anticipate net interest expense for the year to be in the mid- to high $200 million, reflecting the higher interest rate environment and cost of debt on our recent bond issuance. Third, in light of the change in the Swiss statutory tax rate and the $24 million one-time non-cash impact we recorded in Q1, now anticipate an adjusted effective tax rate for fiscal 2024 in the low 30s%.
At the same time, the underlying tax rate, excluding this discrete impact, remains in the high 20s going forward. Finally, on fiscal 2024 share count, while our outstanding share count increased by approximately 33 million at the beginning of Q2, due to the Paris share issuance, we plan for it to come down by 27 million by Q4, with the exercise of the first equity swap, with further share count reductions anticipated in fiscal year 2025 and fiscal year 2026. Turning to our free cash flow. We generated free cash flow of $124 million in the quarter, up 41% from the prior year and in line with our expectations. The increase was driven by higher Adjusted EBITDA and lower CapEx.
Looking to the full year, as we continue to expand our profitability and keep tight control of working capital, we expect strong free cash flow growth in fiscal 2024. I would like to take a moment to discuss Coty's historic dual listing. As a reminder, we made the decision to pursue a dual listing on Euronext Paris, as this was a natural progression for Coty, aligning with our heritage, reflecting our substantial business presence in Europe, and attracting European investors who are very familiar with the beauty and luxury sectors. As of September 28, Coty shares have been trading on both the New York Stock Exchange and the professional segment of Euronext Paris. In order to facilitate ownership by European investors and to build liquidity in Europe, we issued 33 million shares at a price of $10.80 or EUR 10.28 in a well oversubscribed transaction.
Importantly, in Q3, we expect to exercise a 27 million share buyback through the first phase of our equity swap, which will largely offset the Paris share issuance, resulting in negligible dilution exiting fiscal 2024. We are targeting a further reduction in our share count through a 23 million share buyback in fiscal 2025, using our second equity swap. In sum, we remain committed to managing our diluted share count toward approximately 800 million shares by fiscal 2026. Moving to our capital structure, we ended Q1 with net debt of approximately $3.9 billion. As a result, our leverage at the end of the quarter was around 3.8 times, down from around 4.1 times at the end of Q4, and consistent with our expectations. Factoring in our Wella stake, we ended the quarter with economic net debt of approximately $2.9 billion.
Specific to Wella, in light of Coty's strong free cash flow trajectory in the first half fiscal 2024, our successful Paris dual listing, and given misalignment on final deal terms, Coty and the counterparties have decided to end the partial sale of our Wella stake. It is important to emphasize that we remain committed to reaching an investment-grade profile, targeting leverage 3x exiting calendar 2023, approximately 2.5x exiting calendar 2024, and approximately 2x exiting calendar 2025. We also continue to target divesting our full Wella stake by end of calendar 2025. Focusing on our balance sheet, in September, we successfully issued EUR 500 million of 2028 senior secured euro notes, further extending our debt maturity profile. Following this issuance, close to 100% of our total debt is now fixed rate, which is important to the current interest rate environment.
Today, we are also announcing the launch of a tender to retire up to $400 million of our outstanding 2026 U.S. dollar bonds based on our strong cash inflow in the first half fiscal 2024. This speaks to our strengthening balance sheet and our financial flexibility as we continue to actively reduce our debt. Looking ahead, our strong continued progress on deleveraging and debt paydown support our expectation for our interest expense to steadily decline in the coming years, despite the currently rising interest rate environment. I will now hand it back to Sue to review our strategic progress in the quarter.
Thank you, Laurent. Let me take a few minutes to discuss the progress we continue to make on our six strategic pillars. Starting with our first strategic pillar, which is stabilizing and growing our Consumer Beauty business. Building on the momentum we saw in our Consumer Beauty in fiscal 2023, the business once again delivered strong growth. In Q1, our Consumer Beauty revenue grew 10% like-for-like, in line with the global mass beauty market, which remained very resilient in the macro volatility. The global and multi-category footprint of our business continues to be a great strength, as short-term fluctuations in a given category or market is compensated by strength in other areas. During the quarter, we saw growth acceleration in our mass fragrance business, coupled with solid growth in color cosmetics and mass skin and body care brands.
It's important to highlight that in our core color cosmetics category, the market continues to premiumize, as products with price points well above the category average outperform the broader category. We see this trend across our core markets, such as the U.S., U.K., and Germany, which reinforces our view of the limited price elasticity in beauty, including mass beauty, provided that the products are desirable, cool, and good quality. Against this backdrop, we are continuing to elevate the desirability of our brands with relevant communication strategies and always-on innovation. Following on the tremendous success of CoverGirl's Yummy Gloss, which went viral on TikTok, fueling unit demand that was several times higher than our initial expectations, we have platformed this winning innovation and brought it to our second biggest cosmetic brand, Rimmel.
We've recently launched the equivalent, Rimmel Glassy Gloss, over the past month, and the results in the U.K. look equally promising. Rimmel is now the number one lip gloss brand in the U.K., with the Glassy Gloss significantly over-indexing with Gen Z consumers and premiumizing the Rimmel portfolio. At the same time, while U.S. Nielsen brick-and-mortar trends have been sluggish in recent months, CoverGirl is strongly outperforming online, with double-digit % sell-out growth in e-com, supporting solid growth in overall brand sales. The strength of the CoverGirl brand is also reinforced by the latest household panel data, where CoverGirl remains the second brand in terms of household penetration and the only brand amongst the top three growing repeat purchasers.
As we discussed on the last earnings call, having repositioned our key consumer beauty brands and revamped the innovation pipeline for each brand, the next phase of our strategy is now to fully capitalize on the Gen Z opportunity. Our focus for fiscal 2024 is therefore to step change our social media reach in order to drive our brands and build stronger community engagement, fully keeping in step with the evolution of the market and with Gen Z habits. We've kicked off multiple initiatives in this area. For our key consumer beauty brands, we have increased our paid and unpaid influencer partnerships from several dozen to now many hundreds, with a short-term goal to reach thousands of influencers for each of our key brands, like CoverGirl and Rimmel.
We've set up dedicated TikTok studios in 15 countries, including the U.S. and U.K., inviting up-and-coming TikTok influencers to collaborate with our brands and generate creative content while utilizing our top-notch facilities and equipments. The video playing on the side was filmed by one influencer at our newly established CoverGirl TikTok studio in New York City. In the U.K., which was one of our first markets to fully embrace the Gen Z TikTok playbook, we are already seeing great results. In the past quarter, two of our cosmetic brands ranked in the top 10 in terms of earned media value and visibility, impact, and trust, which are two measures of brands' consumer reach and engagement on social media.
With Rimmel ranking at number 4 and Max Factor at number 6, and tripling their earned media value year on year, we are very proud that our brand are re-resonating with consumers of all ages on social media, even surpassing the scores of leading Gen Z cosmetics brands. We are expanding our influencer engagement further with the recent announcement of Rimmel's Creator Crew, a group of 9 global influencers who will not only partner with Rimmel on new campaigns, but will also be co-creating new products and launches. In short, Coty is moving quickly in this dynamic part of the market, and we look forward to sharing further updates on our key initiatives in this area. Turning now to our second pillar, focused on accelerating our luxury fragrance business.
The Fragrance Index maintained momentum, driven by strong demand for fragrances across the globe and ongoing premiumization as consumers are seeking more concentrated, longer lasting, and more sophisticated scents. In Q1, the Prestige fragrance market grew over 10%, which was consistent with the growth levels we saw last year. At the same time, Coty's Prestige fragrance revenues grew approximately 25% like-for-like, outperforming the market by 2.5 times. These very strong results were driven by momentum in our core fragrance lines, the outstanding results for our recent innovations, and improved service levels. As testament to the success we're driving in our portfolio, sales for our top 7 Prestige fragrance brands grew in the high 20s%. Let me now take a minute to highlight the outstanding in-market result of our Prestige fragrance brands, and in particular, Burberry.
I'm incredibly proud to share that the recently launched Burberry Goddess Eau de Parfum has become the number 1 female fragrance launch in key markets, becoming one of the only fragrances on the market to resonate strongly across all global regions. Although it's still new, Goddess is now ranking amongst the top 6 fragrance lines across key markets when compared against both new launches and existing icons, which is particularly impressive given Goddess is currently a single SKU compared to the multiple SKUs under other leading fragrance lines. Importantly, the tremendous success of Goddess is elevating the sales of other Burberry fragrance icons, including Burberry Hero and Burberry Her, resulting in total Burberry fragrance revenues in Q1 nearly doubling year-over-year.
The strengthening of our fragrance icons was also evidenced by three franchises: Burberry Goddess, Gucci Flora, and Burberry Her, reaching the top ten female fragrances in the U.S. for the first time in the company's history. Coty is now the only company to have three fragrance lines in the U.S. top ten female fragrances. All of this reaffirms Coty's position as a leading fragrance expert with best-in-class end-to-end capabilities, from developing a winning scent, which resonates with consumers across all regions, to activating distinctive marketing campaigns, and finally, to disruptive in-store and online activations. Complementing our expansion strategy in our core prestige fragrance businesses, we are continuing to strengthen our prestige makeup business through both assortment and distribution expansion. For Kylie Cosmetics, where lip products have historically been at the center of the brand, we have begun to actively expand the assortment.
The Kylash Mascara, which we launched last spring, has now become the second franchise for the brand, while also boosting door productivity. We are building on this momentum with the recent launch of the Kylie Power Plush Concealer, which you see pictured here, further solidifying Kylie as a full-range makeup brand. In Q1, we also delivered double-digit growth in Burberry makeup. Burberry's recently launched Beyond Wear foundation continues to resonate with consumers in Asia, and we therefore intend to expand our distribution in the region, led by our two leading Burberry franchises, Burberry Goddess fragrance and Burberry Beyond Wear foundation. And while Chinese retailers are still working through some inventory, the China sellout of both Gucci and Burberry makeup grew strongly in the quarter. Shifting to our third strategic pillar, building our skincare business.
We kicked off our skincare acceleration strategy in the spring with brand relaunches and exciting initiatives across each of our key skincare brands: Philosophy, Lancaster, and Orveda. Philosophy announced the new brand formulation principle, Dermatologic Wisdom, and began upgrading its presence both online and in store, including in over a thousand Ulta doors. The resonance of this new brand equity and our activations have resulted in Philosophy being the number one U.S. skincare brand in terms of advocacy. And importantly, this has fueled double-digit % revenue growth in Q1 and in the last six months. In fact, we are seeing strong momentum in both the hero skincare lines like Micro delivery and Miracle Worker, as well as the newly launched Dose of Wisdom Bouncy Skin Reactivating Serum, which was recently awarded the 2023 Oprah Daily Beauty Award. Moving to our second key skincare brand, Lancaster.
As you recall, in early spring, we launched the ultra-premium Lancaster skincare line called Ligne Princière, with a launch initially focused on the Chinese mainland and Hainan markets. Having presented in Princière's superior technology, formulations, and winning textures to China's leading influencers, beauty editors, and consumers, I am incredibly proud to share that these key opinion leaders are now recognizing Lancaster as one of the most advanced and effective skincare brands on this very competitive market. As you can see pictured on this slide, in Q1, Vogue China named Lancaster Crème Princière as the best anti-aging cream on the market, while Elle China named Lancaster Ligne Princière as a Beauty Star of 2023. These awards, by the leading beauty publications in China, raise Lancaster's brand awareness and scientific credentials with the very discerning Chinese consumers.
Now, while starting from a smaller baseline, our amplification of our skincare brand, Orveda, is also in full swing. In Q1, we launched the breakthrough Omnipotent Concentrate Serum with a market-leading 24% concentration of active ingredients, which do not irritate the skin due to their biocompatible formulations. With the ultra-premium pricing and positioning of Orveda, our focus has been on building a whisper campaign around the brand amongst the targeted ultra-high net worth individuals. We are continuing to drive brand trial, education, and awareness as Orveda partners with the leading art and fashion shows today, while also welcoming celebrities at key events such as the Met Gala and the Cannes Film Festival. These activations are beginning to translate into real buzz.
As some of you may have seen, during the recent Paris Fashion Week, Pamela Anderson made a beauty statement by attending the fashion show without makeup. In a purely authentic and unpaid endorsement for the brand, she shared with Vogue that she relies on Orveda skincare to achieve natural, glowy skin. Strong global PR coverage and multiple industry awards that Orveda has already garnered translates into close to 1 million in earned media value. As the buzz and excitement around Orveda continues to grow, we are seeing this translate into first business results. For example, in recent months, the sales productivity at leading Orveda counters, such as the Saks Fifth Avenue flagship in New York, has more than doubled year-on-year. Our focus is therefore to continue this whisper campaign while simultaneously accelerating the opening of new doors and counters.
Moving now to our fourth strategic pillar, which is digital and e-com. In Q1, both divisions delivered very strong e-com sales momentum, with growth of over 25% like- for- like in both prestige and consumer beauty. As a result, the e-com penetration in both businesses expanded by approximately 140 basis points, resulting in total Coty e-com penetration of close to 20%. It's worth highlighting that our e-commerce growth in both businesses was ahead of the underlying e-commerce trends, with both our prestige and consumer beauty businesses expanding their online market share. We've achieved this momentum through best-in-class online launches, the success of our digital advocacy strategy, active participation in key online shopping events, while at the same time premiumizing the portfolio and increased digital media competitiveness.
Expanding on my earlier comments regarding building Lancaster's momentum in China, I'm happy to report that as we are building Lancaster presence in China e-com, the brand Q1 sales on Tmall and Douyin were 1.5-3 times higher quarter-over-quarter. Moving to our fifth strategic pillar, building our presence in China. While the overall China market recovery has been somewhat slower than many expected, the white space opportunity for Coty in China remains intact and immense, and we have therefore continued to outperform the prestige beauty consumption. In Q1, our prestige revenues in China grew year-on-year, led by Mainland China, with strong momentum in Gucci, Burberry, Chloé, and Marc Jacobs retail sales. On the Consumer Beauty side, which accounts for a fraction of our China sales, revenues declined due to elevated trade inventory.
Importantly, the sell-out growth in our Prestige business far exceeded the underlying market growth in Q1, with Coty's sell-out growing double-digit % in mainland China and triple-digit % in Hainan, while the beauty market was modestly positive. In sum, we are continuing to expand our presence in China, which remains one of the several significant opportunities for us in both the short and, of course, the mid and long term. Finally, we are continuing to see very strong momentum in our travel retail channel. In Q1, our travel retail sales grew over 20% Like-for-Like, coming on top of over 30% growth in fiscal 2023. Importantly, we are seeing this momentum across all regions with double-digit % travel retail sales growth in Europe, the Americas, and Asia Pacific.
We have continued to gain share in the high growth and highly profitable travel retail channel, particularly in EMEA and the Americas, fueled by distribution expansion, travel retail launch exclusivities, successful innovations, and our growing multi-category presence. In fact, Lancaster's sell-out in Asia travel retail is now growing triple digits. Looking forward, we do not see any slowdown in consumer travel, particularly when taking into account that international travel by the Chinese cohort is beginning to recover but is still roughly half of pre-COVID levels. Turning now to our sixth and final strategic pillar, becoming a leader in sustainability. We will be providing material updates and commitments in our upcoming 2023 sustainability report, which will be issued at the end of November. However, I'm very happy to share that we are continuing to make good progress on our ESG framework.
On the environmental side, three of our factories are now carbon neutral, including in Spain, Monaco, and Brazil. Our teams achieved this primarily through a transition to renewable electricity and reducing remaining emissions as much as possible, while only a small portion offset by high-quality credits. On the social side, we are continuing to deliver on our gender equity commitment across key metrics, and we will share more in the coming month. Finally, we are strengthening our resources and governance of sustainability matters as we expand our sustainability office. That brings me to our outlook for fiscal 2024. First, let me share some updates to our outlook for the first half.
Given the very strong revenue growth momentum we saw in the first quarter and strong progress in Q2, we now expect the first half like-for-like sales growth to be +11% to +13%, which is up from our recently raised guidance of +10% to +12%. The increase is supported by outperformance in the prestige segment. For reported revenues, we are still expecting a Forex benefit to revenues in the first half of close to 2%. On gross margins, the significant easing in inflation should drive improving year-over-year trends for our adjusted gross margin. More specifically, in Q2, we expect gross margins to be flattish year-over-year. On the profit side, we continue to expect first half 2024 Adjusted EBITDA margin expansion 10-30 basis points, consistent with the full year.
We estimate first half adjusted EPS of $0.32-$0.34, including the one-time impact from the change in the Swiss statutory tax rate. For the full fiscal 2024 year, we are now expecting revenues to grow 9%-11% like-for-like, which is up from our recently raised guidance of +8% to +10%, supported by outperformance in prestige. Fiscal 2024 reported revenues are still expected to include a 0%-2% benefit from Forex, primarily in first half 2024, fiscal 2024, and a 1%-2% scope headwind for the year from the divestiture of the Lacoste license concentrated in the second half.
We continue to expect modest fiscal 2024 gross margin expansion year-on-year, consistent with our growth algorithm, driven by strong year-on-year improvement in gross margins in the second half as the Q1 gross margin pressures abate. We are targeting fiscal 2024 adjusted EBITDA margin expansion of 10-30 basis points, implying adjusted EBITDA of $1.08 billion-$1.09 billion, based on current Forex rates, which is above the previous guidance of $1.075 billion-$1.085 billion. We still estimate total fiscal 2024 adjusted EPS, excluding the equity swap of 0.44-0.47, implying a strong +16% to +25% growth.
The EPS outlook incorporates the stronger EBITDA outlook, balanced by the one-time non-cash tax impact in Q1, which is driving our fiscal 2024 tax rate to the low 30s%, even as we expect the tax rate to return to the high 20s% going forward, as well as incrementally higher interest expense. We continue to target further reduction in leverage to 3x exiting calendar 2023, fueled by cash inflow, approximately 2.5x exiting calendar 2024, and approximately 2x exiting calendar 2025. To sum up, the beauty market continues to be resilient, holding a prioritized position with consumers all over the world, while also benefiting from ongoing premiumization trends.
In this attractive backdrop, we are successfully executing on the strategy we laid out 3 years ago, with momentum across our core categories and early wins in the white space opportunities we are pursuing, including female fragrances and ultra premium fragrances, skincare, prestige cosmetics, China, and travel retail. We are delivering a best-in-class medium-term financial growth algorithm, active deleveraging, and capital returns. As we propel Coty's growth momentum, we are strengthening our position as a beauty powerhouse. Thank you for joining our prepared remarks call today. As a reminder, we'll be hosting a separate question and answer session on Wednesday, November 8 at 7:30 A.M. Eastern Time or 1:30 P.M. Central European Time.