Good morning, and welcome to Chicago! We had beautiful weather planned for you today, so here's hoping it holds. We're excited to have you here with us today. As you heard, I'm Kylie Rawlins. I lead our investor relations team for Ulta Beauty, and whether you're joining us here in person or virtually, we're excited to have you. Of course, before we begin our presentations, I'd like to remind you of the company's safe harbor language. The statements made today during today's event, which are not historical facts, may be deemed to constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 . Actual future results may differ materially from those projected in such statements due to a number of risks and uncertainties, all of which are described in our SEC filings.
We caution you not to place undue reliance on these statements, which speak only as of today, October sixteenth, twenty twenty-four. We have no obligation to update or revise our forward-looking statements, except as required by law, and you should not expect us to do so. This morning, you're gonna hear from our senior team as we share how we're thinking about the opportunities for Ulta Beauty to reinforce and expand our leadership position in beauty. After the formal presentations, we'll host a Q&A session with our entire executive team. For those joining us virtually, you can submit a question at any time using the Ask the Question tab on the right side of your screen. For those of you who are here in person, you can also submit questions at any time using the QR code on your tables.
We will, of course, you'll be able to ask questions live, during our Q&A session. One more housekeeping note, our presentations, the slides, will be posted on our website later this afternoon. And now, I'd like to introduce Dave Kimbell, our CEO.
All right, thank you very much, Kylie, and good morning, and thank you for joining us today, both here in Chicago and via the webcast. On behalf of the entire executive, Ulta Beauty executive team, I wanna thank you for your time here today and for your interest in Ulta Beauty. Today, we are looking forward to updating you on our company's growth and progress since our last Investor Day in 2021, and to share how we will continue to shape the future of beauty retail and deliver long-term, sustainable, profitable growth and value creation. Now, as I think about the path ahead for Ulta Beauty, I recognize that it is shaped by our history and the important role we play in the dynamic beauty industry.
Since our beginning, Ulta Beauty set out to disrupt by doing beauty differently, from our unique product assortment, to our real estate strategy, to the beauty services offered in every store. And while so much in beauty and at Ulta Beauty has grown and evolved over the years, our company's core purpose has not. We are championing beauty for everyone and helping every single guest discover their own possibilities through the power of beauty. Ulta Beauty has been on this journey for nearly 35 years now. We were founded by two entrepreneurs who opened our first store in the suburbs of Chicago in 1990. They had the insight that most beauty shoppers wanna buy products across all price points and categories, and in a fun, approachable environment.
That model resonated with beauty enthusiasts and led to notable expansion in the 2000 s, along with our loyalty program launch and entry into prestige beauty. We then continued on an accelerated growth path and arrived as a true leader in beauty, significantly increasing our store fleet to more than a thousand stores across all fifty states, launching our e-commerce business, growing our loyalty membership by the millions, and establishing ourselves as the beauty retailer of choice for hundreds of well-established and emerging brands. We have remained on this path of growth and innovation over the past few years, and we have delivered on the strategies we discussed at our last Investor Day, including the launch of Ulta Beauty at Target and our retail media network, UB Media. All of this history positions us well, and our foundation is strong. We are the largest specialty beauty retailer in the U.S.
And the premier destination for makeup, fragrance, skincare, haircare, and beauty services. We bring together all things beauty, all in one place, in more than 1,400 Ulta Beauty stores and more than 500 Ulta Beauty at Target stores across the country and on our digital channels. We have a differentiated and innovative assortment of 600 brands across every major beauty category that both empowers consumer choices and represents beauty's increasing connection to self-care and wellness. Our industry-leading Ulta Beauty Rewards loyalty program has grown to 44 million members, and we continue to enhance the benefits that our guests love. And most importantly, we have an incredible team of more than 50,000 associates who believe in the unique and inclusive power of beauty and who are passionate about helping our guests express themselves to the world.
Okay, with that foundation in mind, we're gonna share with you today our vision for the future of Ulta Beauty. And as we go through our presentation, there are six key points I wanna emphasize.... First, we have consistently delivered exceptional results over time. Second, we are a clear leader in a category that is healthy and strong, with a very bright future. Third, we have a proven differentiated model that will shape our future. Fourth, we are actively investing to power our growth. Fifth, we have a winning team and a culture that has enabled our success and will drive us forward. And finally, we have the right strategies to gain market share and deliver shareholder value over the long term. You'll hear about each of these throughout the day as we lay out our vision for the future of Ulta Beauty. So let's start with our results.
We are incredibly proud of the industry-leading performance we have experienced over the last decade. We have a proven track record as net revenue, operating profit, and diluted earnings per share, all delivered double-digit CAGRs over that timeframe. When we hosted our Investor Day in 2021, we shared our expectations for the financial results we would deliver between 2022 and 2024. Sales and EPS both exceeded our expectations for the three-year timeframe, while operating margin was much stronger than expected in 2022 and 2023, fueled by exceptionally strong comp store performance, but is expected to fall modestly below that range in 2024, as this year has been more challenging than planned. Now, as I shared on our last earnings call, we have adjusted our outlook for 2024 to reflect the headwinds we have experienced this year.
These headwinds include the beauty category growth normalizing to historic growth levels, along with a dynamic consumer environment, elevated competition, particularly in the prestige category, with an unprecedented expansion of points of distribution, and some short-term disruption as we manage through challenges that have come with extensive transformation initiatives we've recently implemented to create greater efficiencies across our business. Now, importantly, we have a clear understanding of what impacted our first half performance, and we are taking actions to reinforce our position and boost our performance, including strengthening our unmatched product assortment through newness and brand partnerships, enhancing our unique guest experience across all channels, fully leveraging our powerful loyalty program, expanding our social relevance to strengthen guest connection, and evolving and tailoring our promotional strategy to maximize guest engagement.
While we anticipate that some of these headwinds will persist in the near term, we are confident in our ability to deliver on our plans and set ourselves up for long-term growth. Moving now to talk in more detail about the evolving dynamics of the beauty category. First, the beauty category is well-positioned to drive strong growth for years to come, as it continues to be an exciting, dynamic, innovative space that remains rooted in the power of human connection and the important and emotional role it plays in our guests' lives. Now, with this inherent strength, we recognize that the competitive landscape continues to intensify with both established and emerging players, and at the same time, consumer engagement continues to be very strong, but has naturally evolved to reflect the expansive role beauty plays in consumers' lives. I'll now share some details on each of these.
First and foremost, beauty is a resilient category that has delivered consistent growth over time because of strong consumer engagement and persistent innovation. And for the decade leading up to the pandemic, the category experienced healthy growth in the low to mid-single digit range. Now, the pandemic brought a fundamental shift in growth rates immediately following this unprecedented time, as the connection between beauty and self-care, combined with a strong desire for unique self-expression, came together to drive outsized growth. And now growth is normalizing to the historic low to mid-single digit range that has been consistent over time, and we fully anticipate that this healthy level of growth will continue for the years ahead. Now, we believe there are five contributing factors driving this sustained and positive growth outlook for the category.
Now, the category connection between beauty and wellness that accelerated over the last few years will continue to drive growth and consumer engagement. Elevated digital and e-commerce performance will drive incremental engagement opportunities. Constant innovation will tap into consumers' insatiable appetite for new products and experiences. Consumers are engaging in their beauty journey earlier in their lives than ever, which drives opportunity to create lasting loyalty and sets the category up for sustained growth, and there are favorable demographic trends, particularly with the expansion of the highly engaged Hispanic consumer, that will add value to the category over time. Now, we'll talk about all of these factors throughout the day, but I'd like to spend a minute now on wellness. The definition of traditional beauty is expanding, as wellness and beauty are converging, and it is an exciting growth opportunity.
Consumers now consider beauty very much part of their self-care and wellness routines. The connection between how someone chooses to express themselves to the world is now deeply connected to overall self-care and wellness, and with that, they are using new products to take care of themselves and becoming even more immersed and engaged in the category. For example, guests have told us that they think of skincare and haircare not just as part of their beauty routines, but very much part of their daily self-care routines. We've also seen fragrance evolve as consumers increasingly are using these products for themselves as simple acts of self-care and joy, and the definition of beauty has expanded into other wellness product categories for expanded self-care. These insights demonstrate an increased personal and emotional connection to beauty that will continue to expand over time.
Importantly, we believe the trusted relationship we have with our guests makes us well-positioned to support their wellness journey, and we have been expanding our assortment to best meet their needs. Now, looking at the competitive landscape. As we have shared previously, the strength of the beauty category, combined with an attractive margin profile, has drawn substantial and diverse competition to the category. What is unique about the current environment is the scale and pace of change. Today, there are significantly more places to buy beauty, especially prestige beauty, with more than 1,000 new points of distribution added in the last three years. We also see an increase in new and nontraditional entrants and increasing touch points for guests on e-commerce channels.
While beauty enthusiasts love engaging in new beauty offerings, they also love the unique Ulta Beauty experience, and the strategies we share today will enable us to successfully navigate the evolving competitive landscape. Importantly, there are many players in the beauty category, from specialty beauty to drug to mass to e-commerce retailers. We believe there are key channels that will drive outsized growth in the years ahead, including specialty beauty and e-commerce. As the largest specialty beauty retailer with a robust omnichannel experience and a strong shop-in-shop partner, Ulta Beauty squarely plays in the channels that continue to grow and take share from other players. Now, I remain extremely confident in our model and our ability to execute and win in an increasingly competitive category. Now, that confidence is driven in large part because at Ulta Beauty, we know beauty and beauty enthusiasts better than anyone.
As I said earlier, we are committed to championing and celebrating beauty in all of its forms. Let's talk more about our target consumer, beauty enthusiasts. Beauty enthusiasts live, love, and breathe beauty. They are passionate about the category and the important role it plays in their lives. For some, beauty is primarily a form of self-expression, how they bring to life their unique qualities to the world. For others, beauty is primarily a form of self-care and an investment in their overall wellness, and for many, of course, it is clearly both. Our opportunity as the industry leader is to continue to meet their all-encompassing beauty needs, to serve diverse beauty enthusiasts, to provide personalized and seamless experiences, and to meet them wherever they'd like to engage with us along their beauty journey. Now, our view of the beauty enthusiast population has evolved in meaningful ways.
Previously, our beauty enthusiast definition included women over the age of 18, and in 2021, when we were last together, we shared that there were approximately 70 million adult female beauty enthusiasts in the U.S. Now, based on the consumer insights and engagement levels we see, we have expanded our scope to include beauty enthusiasts of all genders over the age of 13. Our view on the beauty enthusiast has evolved for a few reasons. Not only has the population of female beauty enthusiasts 18 plus grown since 2021 to approximately 75 million, we also see meaningful engagement in the category for men and younger generations, who we know are engaging in beauty at an even younger age than the generations before them.
Now, today, more men, particularly young men, are engaging in and passionate about beauty, including skincare, fragrance, and in particular, the broad wellness and self-care segment, and we also see meaningful growth from younger generations engaging in beauty. To younger beauty enthusiasts, it's not about looking a certain way or changing their appearance. To them, beauty is fun. It's for self-care and to feel good about how they choose to express themselves to the world, and while we've long enjoyed a strong, strong connection to young consumers, our opportunity to further engage them in our experience and loyalty program represents a long-term growth opportunity. Now, with this expanded definition, we now believe there are approximately 140 million beauty enthusiasts in the U.S. to reach with our evolving beauty and wellness assortment and expansion of our omnichannel presence.
Now, beauty enthusiasts are defined by their passion and engagement in the category and not by any demographic definition, which means there's an opportunity to reach consumers across all segments of the population. At Ulta Beauty, because of our widely appealing experience and broad reach across the country, our guest base is closely representative of the broader U.S. population as a whole. We serve all beauty enthusiasts, all ages, from Gen Alpha to Boomers, who are often seen shopping together, all geographies, from the largest urban markets to small towns across the country, all genders, and all ethnicities. Importantly, there are two demographic trends that we believe will help fuel growth ahead. First, continuing a trend we've seen for a while, each successive generation of teenage beauty enthusiasts are more engaged in the category than the previous generation.
Gen Z has certainly demonstrated this with a higher penetration of beauty enthusiasts than Millennials, and Gen Alpha is on track to elevate this even further as they move into their teenage years. Now, we have long been a destination for teens, and we see it as a privilege to serve as a welcoming, encouraging, knowledgeable, and fun environment for younger generations, just as we do for all of our beauty enthusiasts. Additionally, Hispanic consumers, who over-index in their engagement in beauty, continue to become a larger portion of the population, with higher spending power and greater influence on the category as a whole. Importantly, our efforts to reach all beauty enthusiasts are working. Through the first half of twenty twenty-four, we've seen brand love and awareness increase across all of these consumer groups, as we've been focused on inclusively and authentically connecting with each and every beauty enthusiast.
Now, we believe it is critical, both to our business and because of the role we play in our guests' lives, that absolutely everyone has a home at Ulta Beauty, where they can learn, play, have fun, and find joy in all that we have to offer. We will continue to create an environment that celebrates the inclusive power of beauty. Now, turning to our differentiated business model. We have a powerful model that continues to differentiate us in the market. It starts with our curated assortment to deliver our promise of all things beauty, all in one place. Today, we offer 600 brands, including 95 new brands in the last three years. The newness we are bringing continues to resonate with and delight our guests.
Now, we also know that beauty enthusiasts love to shop in person for beauty, so they can touch, feel, and discover, and our passionate store associates are focused on delivering powerful human connections for every guest who walks into our more than 1,400 stores every single day. We are also expanding our guest reach through omnichannel experiences. Our e-commerce business has now reached more than $2 billion in sales. Our app continues to expand as the central Ulta Beauty hub for connection, discovery, loyalty, and commerce, and we continue to expand our fulfillment options, including expansive same-day delivery, and of course, loyalty. Our brand awareness and love is at an all-time high, and we only continue to foster that through our leading loyalty program, with 44 million active members, driven by high retention and continued growth of new members. Okay, taking a closer look at our winning assortment.
We have a strong breadth and depth of brands across all categories and price points, and we are partner of choice for both established and emerging brands. We are proud to foster strong relationships with the innovative founders behind many of our brands, and the opportunity we have to grow our business together, and you see here just a few of the new brands that our guests are loving, and that we have further solidified our leading assortment with. Now, we meet our guests where they are with our expansive omnichannel model. Our Ulta Beauty store count has doubled in the last 10 years, and e-commerce penetration has grown from under 5% to approximately 20%.
Our stores and store associates remain the heart of Ulta Beauty experience and play an important role in delivering our omnichannel offers through our Buy Online, Pick Up in Store, and Ship from Store fulfillment capabilities. We now have more than 20 million mobile app users, who are not only using it to shop our digital store, but also to enhance their in-store shopping experience through education and virtual try-on. In fact, the majority of spend from app users actually occurs in store. We will continue to leverage the connections between each of these guest touch points to provide the best experience to every guest, however they choose to shop with us. Our Ulta Beauty Rewards loyalty program fuels sales and guest engagement.
With nearly forty-four million active members and approximately 95% of our sales coming from members, our loyalty program is both a strategic asset to our business and a source of joy for our guests, who love the benefits that come with being a member, and who spend more with Ulta Beauty because of it. Not only are we experiencing annual growth in the number of rewards members, we're also seeing those members spend more, in part due to the increased connection between beauty and wellness that I touched on earlier. All right. Now, to summarize the investments we are making to power our growth. Over the last three years, we've updated you on our ambitious transformation and agenda progress, and I am pleased to report that we've completed many of these efforts while advancing the entire portfolio.
Importantly, we finished the three-year integration of our new ERP platform earlier this year, and we continue to further optimize our supply chain, bringing new automation capabilities, additional capacities, and efficiencies. We have also completed and implemented a unified point-of-sale system, modern data infrastructure, and a flexible digital architecture, our Digital Store of the Future. All of these will help us drive and scale our business for years to come, and I am proud of how our team has led through these changes to strengthen the foundation of our business, and I am excited to see them all come together to underpin our future growth. Now, at the same time, we have made meaningful go-to-market investments that position us to accelerate long-term growth. We've opened a hundred new stores in the last two years and see more opportunity ahead.
We've invested in our CRM, member analytics, and personalization capabilities that are allowing us to reach guests in meaningful ways. We've launched and scaled our retail media network, UB Media. We've invested in the capabilities and tools needed to elevate our digital and app guest experience, and we've invested in omnichannel fulfillment offerings to provide speed and options that meet every guest need. These areas position us to drive long-term growth, and we'll share more on how we are building on them today. Now I'll discuss what fuels all we do at Ulta Beauty, our team, and our culture. Our mission, vision, and values continue to inspire and guide us every single day. They remain core to how we lead and how we engage with our guests and partners, and how we make decisions.
Our vision is to be the most loved beauty destination of our guests and the most admired retailer for our associates, our communities, our partners, and of course, our investors. Our mission is to use the power of beauty to bring to life the possibilities that lie within each of us, inspiring every guest and enabling each associate to build a fulfilling career. And we have long been guided by our values in all that we do to deliver on our mission and our vision. Our culture and talent are at the heart of the experience we are committed to provide, both to our guests and our associates at Ulta Beauty.
We are pleased that our associate engagement index is above the retail benchmark, and particularly proud that associates voiced feeling connected to our common purpose, able to bring their authentic self to work, and cared for as individuals, and this high-level engagement has led to a record-high associate retention in our stores. Now, we also continue to invest in the Ulta Beauty team with a number of new internal leadership development programs and a dynamic new training platform. Our leaders across the company are talented, diverse, and highly engaged, and we have a robust succession planning process in place to both protect Ulta Beauty and create career pathways for our team, and our associates are passionate about using beauty as a force for good every day in our stores and beyond, through our collective support of our local communities.
Now, on a personal note, I celebrated my ten-year anniversary with Ulta Beauty in February of this year, and the best part of the journey has been being part of this amazing team, who work hard every day to move our business forward in ways we couldn't even have imagined ten years ago. Ulta Beauty is a special place, and I hope by spending time with us today, you not only gain business insight, but you also get a sense of the pride and passion we have in the impact we are making together. All right. Now, everything we talk about today is shaped and enabled by Ulta Beauty's outstanding executive team. We have a talented, experienced, and tenured executive team who are experts in their fields and innovative, collaborative leaders.
You'll have a chance to meet the entire team, and several of them will be sharing key aspects of our strategic plan, and all of them will be participating in our Q&A session. We also have some additional members of our senior leadership team here with you today, who you may have a chance to meet over lunch or during the tour of our newest distribution center this afternoon. This team is world-class and ready to go. They are focused on our bright future ahead and ready to drive Ulta Beauty forward as the undisputed leader in beauty. Now, finally, but very importantly, Ulta Beauty has the right strategies to gain share and deliver value to our shareholders. Our strategic framework summarizes how we will achieve our long-term vision and shape the future of Ulta Beauty.
It is designed to both lean into our existing strengths, while at the same time, driving innovation that will meet the evolving needs of beauty enthusiasts. For the rest of our time together today, we'll share details on this robust plan. But I'll start with an overview. We begin with our view that Ulta Beauty is the destination for beauty enthusiasts for a lifetime, from the moment they enter the category to serving as their partner throughout their beauty and wellness journey. And as the beauty destination of a lifetime, we will drive profitable growth and shared leadership in beauty and wellness through four foundational focus areas: assortment, experience, access, and loyalty. First, our assortment, curating the best of all things beauty and wellness for all beauty enthusiasts. Second, our experience, fostering authentic, empowering human connections that inspire, delight, and engage at every touchpoint.... Third, access.
Engaging our guests wherever they want to shop by expanding our reach through seamless and immersive omni-channel experiences. And fourth, loyalty. Building lifelong loyalty and brand love through member growth and personalization. These growth drivers are underpinned by a strong focus on operational excellence and optimization to drive profitability. And most importantly, our aspirations are guided by a powerful team that is committed to our guests and the impact we have on the world. Now, you will hear more throughout the day from our leaders on how these strategies come to life to drive our business forward. But first, I want to share a growth model that all of our strategies and initiatives ultimately ladder up to. These two levers drive a vast majority of our business, and we are focused on driving both.
First, we will continue to increase our Ulta Beauty Rewards member count through increased acquisition and a high retention rate. And second, we will increase member spend by engaging our guest in all that we have to offer and adding more value to their beauty lives. Now, one way to think about how we will achieve our objectives of growing members and spend per member is through the lens of our network of integrated offerings and experiences. Now, our long-term aspiration is to grow our members to 50 million by 2028, penetrating further into the expanded definition of beauty enthusiasts I described earlier. And by both innovating to expand our guest touch points and engaging more guests in more of our existing offerings, will drive growth. As a member engages in more experiences throughout the Ulta Beauty network, we experience higher loyalty, higher spend, and higher share of wallet.
It is truly a loyalty flywheel. For example, when a store-only guest starts shopping online, their spend increases two and a half times, and importantly, their in-store spend actually increases even as they spend online. A single store guest that starts shopping in two or more stores spends two times more. Download the app, two times more. Engage in wellness products, three times more. Use salon, three times more. Use salon and brow, five times more. Now, these are just a few examples, but together, these touch points represent a fully integrated ecosystem of member engagement that will drive our business forward. Okay, now, as I wrap up, I want to share a high-level view of our long-term financial aspiration.
With a healthy category outlook, a differentiated business model fueled by an innovative strategic plan, and a highly passionate and driven team, we are confident in our ability to drive share growth and strong shareholder returns over the long run. Paula will share more detail later this morning on the entire financial outlook, including our belief that 2024 and 2025 will be transitional years as we manage through near-term category dynamics. But over the long term, we are targeting revenue growth in the 4-6% range, operating profit growth also in the mid-single-digit range, approximately 12% of sales, and low double-digit growth in diluted earnings per share.
Delivering these results will ensure Ulta Beauty continues to gain share and advance its position as the leader in beauty, and we look forward to sharing more detail about how we will achieve these results throughout the day. So let's talk about the rest of the day. You will now hear from our senior leadership team as we share details on our strategic plan and the opportunities ahead for Ulta Beauty to grow and thrive for years to come. And then, to close the morning, we will have a Q&A session with Ulta Beauty's executive team. So thank you again for your time this morning and your engagement, and I'm now very excited to bring up our Chief Marketing Officer, Michelle Crossan-Matos.
Good morning, everyone. How are we? I'm Michelle Crossan-Matos, the Chief Marketing Officer here at Ulta Beauty, and I have the pleasure of sharing with you our brand vision and marketing strategies. Now, before I do that and share the details, I want to ground us all in our why. Why are we so passionate about beauty? But more importantly, why are our guests so passionate about us?
Girls don't cry after their face is made. But there's a hope that's waiting for you in the dark. You should know you're beautiful just the way you are, and you don't have to change a thing. The world could change its heart. No scars to your beautiful, we're stars and we're beautiful. Oh, oh, oh! Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. And you don't have to change a thing. The world could change its heart.
So, as you can see, Ulta Beauty has been at the heart of the beauty community for more than 30 years, and that all started with a mission, and that mission of bringing all things beauty in all one place to everyone. We became a safe space that celebrates all the possibilities that beauty creates. And then we took the possibilities even further by leveraging the power of beauty as a force for good for all, so everyone, and we mean everyone, who walks through our doors feels seen, celebrated, and enabled to live their best life through the unique power of beauty. And as a result, we have become more than just a place to shop for beauty. For many, we're a beauty haven, we're a playground for discovery.
And while everyone who steps through our doors has their own unique beauty goals and aspirations, we ensure all are presented with boundless possibilities. You see, we're champions for all, every age, and every life stage. From budding beauty lovers to seasoned pros, straight hair to natural curls, of every race, every age, every gender, we see and we champion everyone for exactly who they are, and more importantly, who they want to be. And we are a community where every generation can share their love and wisdom for beauty with each other, helping and supporting one another. And guests over thirty to share a beauty tip, and just check out some of the responses. Those were incredibly inspiring as we saw different generations of beauty unite around helping each other.
We are a home to people at every age and every stage of their beauty journey, from falling in love with beauty for the very first time and tackling a pesky pimple, or trying a new haircut, or embracing those beautiful, yeah, laughter lines, and simply put, we are the beauty destination for a lifetime, and we are leaning into our role as a beauty destination for a lifetime, which is fueled by our deep insights that enable us to serve all beauty enthusiasts from Gen Z to boomers. Thanks to our best in the industry, proprietary data from our 44 million members, we can create experiences that emotionally connect and delight our guests wherever they are and however they want to shop. This focus on emotional connection and loyalty has been a key driver in us winning shoppers' hearts.
As you can see, our unaided awareness is at an all-time high, and our brand love has earned us the position as the number one specialty beauty retailer in the U.S., resulting in record-breaking loyalty growth and double-digit earned media value growth, and it shows. It shows in our brand health metrics and the growth across all segments, underscoring our ability to connect with each and every beauty enthusiast. Since twenty nineteen, our unaided awareness and brand love has increased across all consumer cohorts, from Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, boomers, as well as Black, Hispanic, and Asian beauty enthusiasts, so our balance of being functional, emotional, and purposeful is working, because to our guests, we are more than just a brand. We are now a love mark.
Now, as we look forward to continuing our growth and leadership, we are focusing on key strategic priorities against two focus areas of building brand love and loyalty. Now, I will cover these in more detail throughout the presentation, but today you will hear from me on building on our unique brand positioning, expanding our beauty consumer targets, driving relevance with trend-forward go-to-market approaches, and then for loyalty, we will talk about our strategies to drive acquisition of our expanded consumer targets, personalization, community, and gamification. So let's focus on the first area, increasing our brand love. Our key strategy is to celebrate and serve all beauty enthusiasts. We know each generation and cohort has their own unique needs.
However, one thing has emerged that unites them all, and that is the desire to have more joy in their life and the unique role that they see beauty in achieving that. And there's no place quite like Ulta Beauty to experience both. In fact, 94% of people say joy is essential to well-being. And as if you've heard, we are focused on driving growth across all beauty enthusiasts. So this strategic position of joy supports our expanded view of beauty and wellness. No matter your age, race, or background, when beauty and wellness combine, joy is the ultimate outcome for our guests. And that is why our joy brand equity platform is so critical, and a space which beauty enthusiasts tell us we, Ulta Beauty, stand for.
As you look at this slide here, you can see that we have a number of cohorts that ladder up to self-care, wellness, and joy. I want to pick out two cohorts. So Dave mentioned the younger generation, and then we also mentioned Hispanics. Through our insights and data, it emerged that, for instance, Hispanics, that more than 46% of Hispanics actually shop as a family. So it's not uncommon when you enter an Ulta Beauty store, that you will see more than one, two generations shopping together, because they see that as the act of bonding and finding joy. So as we move to the next slide. So, as mentioned, this strategic position of joy supports our expanded view of beauty and wellness, which is why it is so critical that joy is a key differentiator for us.
Just last year, we launched The Joy Project, an initiative to make the beauty world and beyond a more joyful place, and The Joy Project is one way we're evolving our position from being a beauty destination to the beauty lovers' love mark. As we expand our brand equity for all beauty enthusiasts, we're focused on driving deeper relevancy through our future-focused marketing approach, and as a part of that, we're shifting from building awareness to driving brand relevance, and social will be at the center of everything we do, and we know the key to unlocking relevancy is by being central, where all beauty lovers are, and that is in social. We're making social the heart of our marketing mix, versus just a part of the mix. We will be trend-focused, working with brand partners to talk to all beauty enthusiasts across the country.
We'll be working with multiple platforms, as we here at Ulta Beauty believe there is a channel for every beauty enthusiast out there. We know that beauty is a top indulgence category in social. When you have authentic social influencers with meaningful content, it creates social relevance, and social influencers are key to inspire brand discovery and engagement. Simply put, if it's trending on social, it's selling in stores, so being top of mind with creators during cultural conversations has been a critical strategy for us at Ulta Beauty, and we are no stranger to this, as seen by our recent Wicked and Mini Brands launch just last week. That is why we are accelerating further with expanded creator networks.
From our amazing programs with influencers such as the Ulta Beauty Collective or our associate brand ambassador program, Ulta Beauties, we look at partnerships as one way to create a stronger connection to our communities. Let's watch this video to see how social is key to building our brands and leveraging social to maximize cultural relevancy.
America is experiencing a joy deficit. That's why we started The Joy Project. Ulta Beauty is uniquely positioned to ignite joy in ways no one else can, because beauty isn't just about how you look, it's about how you feel. We're on a mission inspired by our more than 55,000 associates to help people find, embrace, and experience more joy. We started with tackling the number one barrier to joy, our inner critic. We tapped motivational speaker and New York Times bestselling author, Mel Robbins, to help us spark a national conversation about how to overcome that negative inner monologue. In this next chapter, we're shifting from our inner critic to empowering our inner circles to show how beauty connects us all.
On National Day of Joy, we launched a joy-forward social movement, inviting brand partners, Ulta Beauties, the UB Collective, and buzz-worthy beauty lovers to start the world's largest compliment chain. In time for World Mental Health Day, we launched the Joy Council, our own inner circle of world-renowned experts across mindfulness and wellness. Led by Dr. Deepak Chopra as Honorary Chief of Joy, the council provides inspirational videos with easy, accessible practices to teach others how to cultivate joy every single day, and they're initiating our third social wave through fun, engaging content, like the Minute of Joy Challenge. We're supercharging our efforts with the Joy Of podcast, covering all things at the intersection of beauty and joy.
... Joy is inherently connected to beauty. This is more than a campaign, it's a mission, and we'll continue to redefine beauty as a force of good for all.
So now turning to our second focus area, our world-class Ulta Beauty Rewards program. Ulta Beauty Rewards is one of the largest loyalty programs among specialty retailers, with 44 million active members and counting. And while we've been leaders in loyalty for more than a decade, we see tremendous growth and opportunity, and we have set a near-term goal to reach 50 million active members by 2028. The key to our success is always listening, listening to our members and evolving our experience. Earlier this year, we refreshed our amazing program and introduced its new name, Ulta Beauty Rewards. The same great program just got even better. We're incredibly proud that during a time when many companies are pulling back on benefits, we're leaning in and giving more of what our guests love. We have seen a double-digit increase in satisfaction because of these very enhancements.
And let me tell you, our guests love Ulta Beauty Rewards, and we see it every day across social media, with comments like, "Ulta Beauty Rewards is the best ever!" and that they love seeing their points turn into dollars. In fact, we have a best-in-class retention rate of more than 70%, and our diamond and platinum members are even higher. We know members shop more than non-members per year, so we will continue leaning into the power of our loyalty member growth model, fueling growth by acquiring new members, reactivating lapsed, retaining existing members, and maximizing lifetime value. We will drive lifelong loyalty by investing in four key pillars. First, we will supercharge acquisition with an expanded view of the addressable market, appealing to a wider view of the beauty enthusiasts, including teens, men, and wellness seekers.
Secondly, we will leverage the power of our personalization capabilities, which we'll hear more about in just a minute. And third, we will shower our diamond and platinum members with even more love and meaningful experiences that reward them beyond points. And finally, we'll drive growth through expansion of gamification and the power of community. As community does play a critical role in exploration, discovery, and joy, I am pleased to say we launched Ulta Beauty Community on World Mental Health Day last week, an online destination for all members to connect with each other and tap into fellow beauty lovers everywhere to share, learn, and inspire each other with content and beauty tips along the way.
To complement our community-building efforts, we launched the Joy Hub and the Joy Of podcast to empower members to encourage with content from our expert Joy Council, and bond over shared interests like wellness and other relevant topics. Looking ahead, the next frontier of loyalty growth is enabled by personalizing the shopper journey. Remember, with 95% of sales linking back to our reward members, we will reward and leverage the most robust set of data in all of beauty to personalize. We know what our members are buying, and we understand their preferences. This allows us to address their specific needs and also to predict and anticipate unmet needs through personalization. As personalization is critical to our success, we have been on a multiyear journey, supercharged to focus on building our capabilities.
As far back as 2018, we started with the build-out of our data foundation. Then we built a proprietary AI recommendations engine, and then we introduced custom experiences and key moments along the entire journey. And now we are ready to know our members and tech stack with the key capabilities to drive even more contextualized, real-time, and relevant experiences. Our North Star is a future, a future that is fully automated, real-time personalization engine, and we are well on our way to achieving this North Star. Today, we are personalizing at scale, and we are already unlocking value, starting with identity resolution, which allows us to know our guests wherever they engage. We then build a robust understanding of their beauty preferences based upon their shopping and engagement history.
We leverage the power of data and AI to serve up curated content and recommendations throughout the shopping journey, inspiring discovery and purchase. After purchase, we keep the conversation going with replenishment reminders and helpful tips about products to engage and drive deeper connection. Again, we are supercharging the impact of personalization through the power of our one-of-a-kind data set and technology. To help us accelerate, I am pleased to announce our strategic partnership with Adobe, leader in tech innovation and personalization. We're just gonna show you a quick video to bring that to life. Together, we are moving even faster toward our vision to create a fully automated personalization engine. Using data, the power of AI, and machine learning, we will enhance every interaction, whether they're browsing our website, engaging on our app, or shopping in our stores.
The engine will dynamically adjust in real time as users interact with our brand, crafting highly personalized experiences at scale without manual intervention, so today, I've talked about two focus areas of building brand love and extending our loyalty program leadership. Now, I'm going to talk about how we're leveraging both of these areas to fuel our retail media network, UB Media. As you may recall, we launched our retail media network, UB Media, in May of twenty twenty-two, to transform the way our brand partners can connect with beauty lovers. Bridging the gap between guests and brand partners, we are creating effective audience models to maximize sales and return on ad spend for each brand partner. What makes UB Media so unique versus other retail media networks is its ability to leverage insights from the very best loyalty program in beauty, with over forty-four million loyalty members.
UB Media is quite simply a powerhouse of data. Using our member-powered data, we design, deploy, and optimize campaigns in owned and external channels. This way, every brand has the opportunity to leverage our best technology and insights to power their own growth. On top of being an outstanding brand-building tool for partners, it is also a margin accretive lever for UB to generate income by providing these media and targeting services. The investments we are making are an effective way to drive traffic to Ulta Beauty and to also halo to our core advertising, while also fueling discovery and growth among beauty enthusiasts. We are so proud of how UB Media has grown to be an important contributor to our business that is driving traffic and profitability. We now actively work with over 300 brands who see the value in this unique offering.
From 2022-2023 w e've seen a 15% increase in the numbers of campaigns and a 35% increase in brand investments year over year. We believe in the power of our retail media network as a critical driver of growth, and we will continue this momentum by enhancing our product capabilities to build the best retail media network in beauty, expand on the discovery, introducing new channels and platforms for brands to engage, and serving as a strategic brand-building partner. In summary, you've heard today how we will continue building on our key strengths and investing for growth across brand love, loyalty, personalization, and UB Media. This is incredibly important now, as we know the role of beauty is evolving, as is the beauty enthusiast. And we here at Ulta Beauty are shaping beauty to be a force for good for all.
Our goal is to serve all beauty enthusiasts and be their beauty destination for a lifetime. We will lean in on loyalty in a powerful way that will create the program of tomorrow, to reach new beauty enthusiasts through meaningful and personalized experiences, and make UB Media the brand-building powerhouse. As the original disruptors of our category, we are so very excited for the future. As we unlock the possibilities for all, we invite everyone to enjoy Ulta Beauty as a destination for a lifetime. I wanna thank you all for your time today, and now I'd like to turn the stage over to our Chief Merchandising Officer, Monica Arnaudo. Thank you.
All right. Thank you, Michelle, and good morning, everyone. I'm Monica Arnaudo, Chief Merchandising Officer, and I am excited to discuss our key accomplishments over the last few years and our strategy going forward. I'm incredibly proud of the results and of our team in delivering breakout growth. Going forward, we will build on our success and momentum, curating the best of beauty and wellness, and focusing on delivering a breadth of exceptional products that inspire and delight our guests for a lifetime. As Dave mentioned earlier, the total beauty market is very healthy and demonstrated strong growth from $80 billion in 2021 to $100 billion in 2023, and during this timeframe, all core categories drove increases, and the overall mix of categories within the beauty market remained consistent.
Ulta Beauty also grew within the total market, increasing our market share to the low double digits since 2021, reflecting the strength of our business model and compelling assortment. From second half 2020 through first half 2024, we have driven double-digit growth across all core categories. Makeup, our largest category, achieved 10% annual growth over the last three years, with strength across complexion, face color, and lip. And we recently launched new brands, such as Charlotte Tilbury and Ilia, that lean into that strength. Now, we know that makeup has been a challenge category for us, and we are committed to reigniting growth. Skincare has delivered high double-digit growth at +17% over the past three years.
This has been driven by our strong mix of brands, new shoppers entering the category, and Ulta Beauty at Ulta Beauty, and increased basket sizes, with guests adding more products to their routines. We are a market leader in haircare, and as the number one volume, omni, prestige, and professional haircare retailer, we achieved 11% annual growth over the past three years. We have seen recent softness in hair and have a large opportunity to drive more growth through our vast assortment strength across pro, prestige, masstige, and mass, and educating our guests through our 8,500 stylists. And finally, fragrance has seen explosive growth, led by celebrity-fronted launches, the demand for accessible luxury, and an increased base, thanks to the rise of fragrance popularity among Hispanics and the younger Gen Z and Gen Alpha consumers.
Our competitive advantage and why guests choose Ulta Beauty is our unique and differentiated assortment, driven by our robust mix of categories to fulfill all beauty needs, price segments from accessible to luxury, with 70% of our business in prestige and 30% in mass, and our incredible and relevant brand mix, both in depth and breadth, that our guests love. This advantage drives meaningful results in our member stats. 71% of Ulta Beauty members shop two or more categories, and over 50% shop three-plus categories. Moreover, guests that shop across both prestige and mass, these guests make up 80% of our category spend. We also drive relevancy in our assortment across key category platforms.
As we embark on the fifth year of conscious beauty, we aspire to lead in making clean and sustainable beauty accessible to all. This segment continues to grow in importance, particularly Gen Z, as 80% are willing to spend more on clean beauty. At the last Investor Day, we spoke about doubling our assortment of Black-owned and founded brands, and I'm proud to share that we have exceeded that goal, and our BIPOC brands boast 24% year-over-year growth. We also launched our Muse Accelerator program in 2022 to support emerging brands and founders as they enter retail. Sparked at Ulta Beauty is our platform to launch and support new and emerging brands, and we have launched over 50 brands since 2019.
Guests who shop our Sparked brands are among our most loyal and valuable guests, spending 220% more than the average… And finally, wellness is a top priority for us, and we'll speak to this in more detail soon. Our assortment strategies over the years have fueled growth, differentiation, and guest love. We have a vast assortment of approximately 600 brands and thousands of products. We've been a critical retailer, driving growth for our brands. A launchpad for new, exciting, relevant brands with 95+ new brand launches since 2022, a brand builder, introducing guests to over 50 emerging brands through our Sparked program. And as the consumer demanded more from the beauty industry, we invested in our category platforms to drive consumer relevancy. These drivers are foundational to our assortment strength.
As we shift to our vision and strategies for the future, we are confident in our ability to build upon our strong foundation and drive long-term sustainable growth. We aspire to deliver the best of all things beauty and wellness, capturing guests for a lifetime, and we will do this by focusing on three areas. Leading category trends. We are experts in identifying and bringing key trends to the market with our brand partners. This will be more critical than ever as the market has become increasingly competitive. Drive and enhance a compelling and relevant portfolio of brands across established, emerging, new, and exclusive brands, which includes our recently relaunched Ulta Beauty Collection. Growing and expanding wellness. We will win in this growing, fragmented category, with consumers trusting us more than the competition.
An important aspect of increasing category growth is leading category trends, and we are the trend experts and continually evaluate the landscape for what guests want and what is coming. In makeup, we're focused on reigniting growth, and we see opportunity across three key trends. Multi-use products, particularly blended with skincare, are something that guests seek as they streamline their routines. We recently launched ILIA, a brand that features high-performance cosmetics designed with active levels of skincare ingredients, and that's a great example of this. Our pipeline also has more sensorial formulas and packaging coming, and glam is coming back with strong trends in eye-focused looks, an area of strength for us as we think about positioning across mass and prestige and the subcategories that live within eye. In skin, we expect continued growth to come from K-beauty and guests favoring glass skin looks.
We recently added five brands to our assortment and see this continuing to grow in 2025. Additionally, consumers are more ingredient and health-conscious than ever, and so it's not surprising to see clinical formulas, ingredient transparency, and SPF every day, driving growth now and in the coming years. Derm-recommended continues to expand as our guests seek trusted and credible skincare solutions. Within hair care, treatments are still driving incrementality for the business, and as we move forward, we see trends coming from the continued skinification of hair, offering more products that enhance hair benefits beyond shampoo and conditioner. Scalp innovation and treatments are also driving growth in both emerging and established brands as consumers are becoming more educated on the importance of scalp care. Finally, curly and textured continues to show strength and growth potential as we move forward.
There is substantial consumer interest wearing their natural hair, and the majority of the global population has curly hair, so we know there's more room for growth. We expect fragrance expansion based on the shift toward earlier entrants into the category, driven by Gen Z and Gen Alpha. We are already seeing a younger demographic in stores and expect that to continue. Men have also increased their propensity to wear cologne and scent-forward products, and we are positioned to take advantage with Armani, Christian Dior, and Montblanc, just to name a few. We have also had tremendous growth through new forms and extensions, notably with body mist, and we expect that to continue. We've seen substantial growth from Sol de Janeiro in prestige and emerging brand Le Monde Gourmand in masstige, and we're excited about more new and existing brands expanding into this product format in 2025.
In addition to leading trends, we are continuing to build a compelling and relevant portfolio of brands to drive category growth. To do so, we will focus on established brands that inspire trust, credibility, and guest love. Emerging brands that are true up-and-comers with the makings to substantially grow, new brands that drive innovation, incrementality, and discovery, and exclusive brands and products that sell primarily through Ulta Beauty and are so critical to driving differentiation and guest acquisition... Now, established and emerging brands drive guest engagement and growth. Established brands like Tarte, and Redken, and Clinique, which all generations engage in, love, and trust, drive high sales volume. In fact, we own outsized share in many of our established brands, therefore, continuing to grow them is mutually important for us and for the brands.
As a matter of fact, from 2022 to the first half 2024, Ulta Beauty drove half of the total market sales growth for the top established brands we carry. We have also had tremendous success with emerging brands. Recent launches, including viral brand DIBS, exemplify that it's not just our guests to look to Ulta Beauty for leadership, but also our brands. And many of our emerging brands are synergistic with our category platforms like Conscious Beauty, BIPOC, and Derm, and they're highly relevant to our guests, often filling gaps in our assortment. Bottom line, we are the place for growth, regardless of whether a brand has been around for a hundred years or a hundred weeks. Two examples of brands driving growth are MAC, an established brand, and Divi, an emerging brand. MAC is widely known. It's a widely known global brand, rooted in artistry, self-expression, and inclusion.
It's one of the top makeup brands in the world, with incredibly high reach and EMV. We partner with MAC on new product innovation and go-to-market levers to retain existing and attract new guests, driving mutual growth. Divi is one of the fastest-growing haircare brands at Ulta Beauty. They launched exclusively with us in stores in 2022 and recently launched with Ulta Beauty at Target. The brand has the makings of a future heavyweight. The founder has a compelling story that has led to quality, innovative formulas and is known for disruptive marketing that delights our guests. So we're partnering closely with Divi to amplify their growth for years to come. Okay, now turning to newness, which drives 20%-30% of our annual revenue, with over 95 brands launching since 2022.
Whether trendy, celebrity-led brands like Fenty Beauty or trend-forward brands like Sol de Janeiro, brands view Ulta Beauty as core to their growth strategy. These brands choose us to grow and scale because of our strong market positioning. We have the biggest beauty-specific loyalty program, an impressive store network, a growing e-com presence, and we drive strong brand awareness and love. Our merchants have been laser-focused on building our new pipeline for 2025 and future years. And while I cannot divulge specifics, I can share that our pipeline is robust, it's strong across all our categories, and nearly half of the brands are exclusive, and we have much more ahead. Now, the importance and value of our exclusive brand portfolio is critical and a strong focus for our merchant team.
We have forty active exclusive brands and another sixty-five brands where we carry a subset of exclusive products or entire product lines, and we're always working with our brand partners to add more. Since 2022, we have launched twenty-five exclusive brands, including some influencer, celebrity-led brands like LolaVie, Wyn Beauty, and Polite Society, with more to come in 2025. We have demonstrated our ability to grow brands over time and have several examples of brands that started as exclusive with Ulta Beauty. These brands are in various stages, and so just to share a few, Tula grew to be the number three skincare brand with us and was acquired by P&G in 2022. Peach & Lily, launched in 2019, remains exclusive with Ulta Beauty and Ulta Beauty at Target and is driving tremendous growth.
Curlsmith launched in 2017 on .com and in stores in 2019 and has grown to be our number one curl brand in hair, and Live Tinted is an emerging makeup brand that has partnered closely with us and has seen significant growth over a short period of time. All have unique journeys, and we love partnering closely with our brand founders, leaders, and teams to build and amplify their incredible brands, harness their innovation, and bring their dreams to life. To supercharge our exclusive brands that differentiate Ulta Beauty, we will increase our investment across all go-to-market levers that drive guest engagement, love, and ultimately, outsized growth. This includes investments across marketing, merchandising, digital, and stores, such as loyalty and sampling, digital and social exposure, tentpole event participation and features, inclusion in our consumer platforms, associate education, in-store eventing opportunities, and much more.
Two current examples of how we drive disruption, differentiation, and social virality for our brands are the exclusive partnerships with NBCUniversal and ZURU. We are the exclusive beauty retail partner of Wicked, and have worked closely with Universal and key brand partners to develop products that will delight fans and guests just in time for the holiday season. The largest collaboration is with Ariana Grande's r.e.m. beauty, which is exclusive to us. Ariana stars in the movie and is supercharging the product collaboration through social media and a viral Ulta Beauty Herald Square store visit just recently. And we partnered with ZURU, a toy company, to create an exclusive and disruptive beauty offering of the beloved Mini Brands, offering 68 tiny replicas of the best-selling products.
Guests of all ages, and especially Gen Alpha, are obsessed with these minis and want to collect them all, which is great because it will drive more visits and trips to Ulta Beauty. Now, as we continue to expand our brand-building capabilities, we are also investing in our own brand, Ulta Beauty Collection, which recently relaunched. Let's take a look. Okay, well, Ulta Collection is not only a multi-category top ten brand in our assortment, but also the highest margin contributor. Our own brand inspires affinity to Ulta Beauty, attracts all generations, especially Gen Z, and we are highly confident we can build Ulta Beauty Collection to new heights. We refreshed the brand to become more purposeful collection, anchored in conscious beauty, including sustainable packaging, and we refreshed the aesthetics and design the brand with the Gen Z and younger millennials top of mind.
Now, you all have an amazing centerpiece of Ulta Beauty Collection products at your table, and then we invite you to share them amongst your table and bring them home to try yourselves, okay, but do that after. All right, a few other things, so the brand elevation includes focus in other areas, too, like compelling creative assets to better showcase our products, refreshed visual merchandising fixtures to guide and inspire our guests, and revamped e-com and app merchandising, making it easier for our guests to shop. In addition, associate education and ambassadorship is critical component, and we are focusing time and investment to support our teams and educate them to then inspire our guests. We're also investing in marketing to drive share of voice and social love.
Finally, wellness is an important growth lever, and the market is large and growing quickly, reaching almost $400 billion by 2023 and posting 12% year-over-year growth. The market is also incredibly fragmented, with no retailer established as a true leader. Ulta Beauty has a right to win in wellness. Per a recent study, consumers ranked Ulta Beauty first as a retailer for trust in carrying wellness products and services above any other retailer in the market. Since launching in 2021, our wellness shop has demonstrated growth and progress. Today, nearly all Ulta Beauty stores have dedicated wellness space. Our assortment is brought to life across 7 subcategories, spanning nutrition, to sleep, to intimate care, bringing brands that our guests love to our stores and online.
Standout brands like Lemme and Foria have fueled growth in this new category for Ulta Beauty, and we are looking to expand our assortment and drive further growth. Our guest engagement in stores and online gives us confidence in our ability to win in the market, and we know our guests want more, so we're committed to building and driving wellness as we know this is a high-growth opportunity for Ulta Beauty, and our focus includes expanding our merchandising footprint in stores, strategically broadening our assortment across our category framework, and building a larger online presence and assortment, so to summarize, we are excited and confident in our assortment growth areas for the future. We will drive core category growth and lead in trends, scale new brands and supercharge exclusive brands, build our established and emerging brands, and accelerate our leadership in wellness.
So thank you for your time today, and, before I leave, I'd like to show you one of our recent commercials, and then we're taking a break, correct? And then you get a break. So thank you so much.
... Beauty brings joy. Joy we all deserve, because beauty is about possibilities, and only Ulta Beauty invites you to explore them all. Here, beauty is your playground, where you can find exactly what you need and discover something you never knew you needed. From splurge-worthy indulgences to your favorites that are priced to play and everything in between. Find all the brands you can't live without and the ones you're dying to try. Beauty is for all. The joy of all things beauty, all in one place.
Thank you very much. We'll now take a fifteen-minute break. Please exit out the doors to your left to enjoy beverages and light refreshments. We'll see you back here in fifteen minutes.
At this time, we invite you to please head back into the ballroom and take your seats. Our program will resume in two minutes. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, our program is about ready to resume. Please take your seats. And now, please welcome back to the stage Ulta Beauty's CEO, Dave Kimbell.
All right, welcome back. Before the break today, we covered two of our core go-to-market pillars: loyalty and assortment. For our remaining time before the Q&A, we'll cover the other two pillars, experience and access, as well as an update on our key capabilities before reviewing the financial outlook. Now, experience is a critical area that will continue to underpin Ulta Beauty's strength and success. Beauty is a very special category. Our guests engage with beauty in deeply personal and emotional ways every single day, and in some of the most special moments and memories of their lives. And today, when guests can purchase beauty products from many different retailers, it is critical that we deliver a joyful, confidence-building beauty experience in ways that others simply cannot.
Now, we believe beauty isn't just something you buy, it's something you do and feel, and only Ulta Beauty can support and inspire every guest in making each shopping trip a positive and meaningful one. So our experience mandate at Ulta Beauty, something we work very hard on, is to provide unique and memorable experiences by fostering authentic and empowering human connection in every touch point we have with our guests.... Our experience strategy anchors in a deep understanding of what our guests are looking for when choosing where to shop for beauty. Through proprietary research, we've identified four key guest experience elements that are most critical in creating loyalty and engagement. First, welcoming and inclusion. Because beauty is deeply personal, it is critical that the environment feels welcoming and inviting to absolutely everyone, regardless of how they choose to express themselves to the world. Second, trusted guidance.
Beauty can be complex, with new products, new techniques, new services, and new needs. Because of this, consumers want help from a trusted partner, a place they can count on to help them navigate all that beauty and wellness offers. Third, convenience and ease. We know guests have a very high expectations for retail fundamentals. They want the mechanics of shopping to be fast, easy, and consistent. And fourth, fun and immersion. Beauty enthusiasts don't view shopping for beauty as just another chore to check off their list. They look forward to it and expect it to be fun, joyful, and fully immersive. Now, understanding the importance of all four of these drivers is vital as we deliver an experience that brings all of these elements together in a differentiated and powerful way.
Now, I'll give you more visibility into each of these four drivers, starting with welcoming and inclusive. An approachable, inclusive environment has always been part of who we are at Ulta Beauty. We invite every guest to experience the powers of beauty and wellness in ways that are personally relevant to them. Because of the breadth and scale of our offering, we are the only retailer to truly offer and celebrate the full world of beauty across price points, brands, categories, services, and channels. We appeal to all beauty enthusiasts, so it's vital that we create an environment where absolutely everyone feels welcome. No judgment, no intimidation, no preconceived assumptions, just a friendly, welcoming, inviting environment for all. Importantly, beauty enthusiasts recognize our leadership in this space, ranking us first among beauty retailers for inclusion and authenticity.
Now, we continue to focus on ensuring every guest and associate feels represented and celebrated in the world of Ulta Beauty, and we will amplify this through our hiring and training practices, and through the culture we build across the entire company. Next, trusted guidance. We know guests expect their beauty retailer to help them, but they are not looking for an environment that tells them exactly what to do. Rather, they want a friendly, helping hand to guide them in finding the information and products they need, and to offer ideas and inspiration. Guests also want support in navigating how they look and feel throughout their lifelong beauty and wellness journeys. Our store and salon associates share their passion and care with guests every day. We are a guest and an associate-centric company.
We know our people have the greatest influence on our guest experience, and we remain focused on setting them up for success. Now, in this space, beauty enthusiasts rank Ulta Beauty first among beauty retailers for both inspiration and helping guests meet beauty goals. We continue to enrich and elevate the ways we provide this guidance to ensure it remains industry-leading through elevated training, brand engagement sessions, playbooks, and so much more. Now, convenience and ease. The bar for seamlessness in shopping experiences continues to rise. Guests have very high expectations for the retail fundamentals. They want the mechanics of shopping to be fast, easy, and consistent. Now, our expansive store fleet and our digital store and supply chain investments have elevated our omnichannel offerings and position Ulta Beauty well in simplifying the shopping experience and removing friction wherever possible.
Now, in this space, beauty enthusiasts rank Ulta Beauty high for providing tools and information, and in having a consistent shopping experience, both in stores and online. Now, our investments to further expand our footprint, combined with holistic omni-fulfillment methods and digital tools to improve the speed and ease in which we deliver for our guests, will enable Ulta Beauty to offer a compelling omnichannel experience unlike anyone else in beauty. All right, finally, fun and immersion. Simply put, beauty enthusiasts love beauty, so shopping for beauty is inherently fun, whether it's in store, online, in a salon, or any other touchpoint. They want to be immersed in the experience. Now, for our guests, shopping for beauty at Ulta Beauty is especially fun. We offer engaging experiences and environment that promotes exploration and discovery and all the joy that beauty can bring.
With a full-service hair salon, brow, skin, and makeup services, in-store eventing, brand activation, sampling, testing, and fun, joyful associates, our stores come to life with the joy of beauty. There is always a fun, unique, and new way to experience beauty and wellness with Ulta Beauty. In this space, beauty enthusiasts rank Ulta Beauty first among beauty retailers in making beauty fun and in helping guests discover new brands and products. And going forward, we will activate our stores even more to immerse our guests in beauty while complementing this core experience with more digital tools to fuel fun and joy, including our newly launched community hub that Michelle mentioned earlier today. Now, while I've emphasized the emotional role of experiences to our guests, I want to be clear about something. Rich, engaging, compelling experiences drive meaningful business value.
As our guests expand their usage of our experience ecosystem, we benefit with higher loyalty, higher spend, higher share of wallet. And expanding our physical and digital presence allows us to grow our member base by reaching new guests and bringing them into our ecosystem. We have a long runway ahead by elevating our welcoming, supportive, convenient, and fun experience across a continually expanding presence, and we are focused on meeting this opportunity. Now, Ulta Beauty is a special company, and we provide special spaces to empower human connection, both in our stores and on our digital platforms. This experience is a key differentiator for us from both brick-and-mortar and e-commerce competition, and we are committed to continuing to advance this strength through focused effort and investment.
Training and culture building to ensure a welcoming environment for all, product and brand training to further elevate trusted guidance, new stores and the experience and speed of digital to advance convenience and ease, and more activations, events, and services to lead the way in fun and immersion. At Ulta Beauty, we have the opportunity to support and celebrate all beauty enthusiasts, because beauty doesn't live on our shelves. It lives in the hands and hearts of individual people who use it to take care of themselves, to express themselves however they choose, and to show up in the world as their very best self. By combining the four elements of experience most important to beauty enthusiasts and continuing to innovate and invest in these spaces, Ulta Beauty will be able to continue to differentiate through the power of guest experience.
Now, our experience strategy comes to life across three key touchpoints in the U.S., our stores, e-commerce, and Ulta Beauty at Target business, and starting next year, internationally with our launch into Mexico, and you will hear more about each of these next, so in closing, our experience strategy positions us to win. We will continue to champion an inclusive and welcoming environment for all, enhance training for our associate, drive salon and services penetration, and further activate in-store eventing. We are excited by the opportunities we have to continue to bring our guest experience to life across all of our channels. All right, so now I'm pleased to invite Kecia Steelman, our President and Chief Operating Officer, to share more on our final strategic pillar, access. Kecia?
Thanks, Dave, and hello, everyone. I'm Kecia Steelman, President and Chief Operating Officer here at Ulta Beauty, and I'm excited to share with you how our leading guest experience comes to life across all of our omni-channel touchpoints, and how we will elevate and bring this experience to even more beauty enthusiasts in the future. To further solidify our position as the destination for beauty enthusiasts for a lifetime, we will win by doubling down on our unique competitive advantages and expanding our reach through seamless and immersive omni-channel experiences. We know the guest journey in beauty is not linear. Physical and digital worlds have merged, fueling omni-channel beauty engagement, discovery, and purchase.
We have built a powerful ecosystem that allows guests to shift effortlessly between touchpoints to meet their needs, and we are investing to take our omni-channel experience to the next level and make it even more seamless and immersive. Dave talked about the power of this ecosystem and how each touchpoint works together to fuel member engagement and spend. It surrounds our guests, enabling them to discover beauty on demand and on their own terms. In our stores, where it is fun and easy for guests to explore and discover new products and services, through our e-commerce channels like ulta.com and our mobile app, which offer guests convenient, interactive, and personalized experiences, and at Ulta Beauty at Target, where we offer our curated assortment that is designed to increase loyalty engagement and introduce new guests to Ulta Beauty.
We bring all these together, meeting guests wherever they are, through a variety of fulfillment options. Whether it's ship to home or buy online, pickup in store, or more recently added fulfillment options like same-day delivery, we provide guests with choice, convenience, and speed. Underpinning our omni-channel ecosystem is our operating infrastructure. The transformative investments that we've made over the last several years to upgrade our ERP system, supply chain network, store technology, data infrastructure, and digital architecture are foundational enablers that drive efficiency to help us elevate the guest experience and support key growth opportunities like international expansion. We know that serving beauty enthusiasts requires an omni-channel approach. Our strategies are rooted in our deep understanding of our consumers. First, stores remain the preferred method to shop for beauty.
Now, I know it may seem counterintuitive, but today, more than two-thirds of beauty enthusiasts prefer to shop for beauty in stores, because that's really where it comes to life. It's where they can test and trial and engage with other beauty enthusiasts. Even more notably, Gen Z beauty enthusiasts are more likely to shop in stores than older generations. At the same time, we know that the majority of purchases and their journeys are around digital engagement, and having a strong, relevant, and easy-to-navigate digital presence is a non-negotiable for our guests. Guest expectations are higher than ever than they were before, and they want to shop beauty in their way. So it's imperative that we continue to invest and build on our leadership position.
We have made meaningful progress expanding access over the last three years, and I'm excited to highlight how we will drive future growth through our stores, our e-commerce business, and new channels, and finally, I will highlight our capabilities and how they will be positioning us for growth, so let's start with our store fleet. There has been so much change across the retail landscape since our inception, and even in just the last 10 years since I've been with this company, but one truth remains, stores really are the heart of our model. With our expansive store fleet of more than 1,400 stores across 50 states, we deliver the best discovery, experience, and beauty. It's where beauty comes to life through our knowledgeable associates, who provide fun, welcoming experiences and support each guest's unique and personal beauty journey.
Our stores are conveniently located for quick and easy access, and our enhanced in-store fulfillment options meet guests where they are, whether their trip mission is to play and discover in store or to replenish items through buy online, pickup in store, or curbside pickup. Real estate is one of our core competencies, and our store expansion continues to be a deliverer of performance and an effective use of our capital resources. Our recent performance reaffirms the strength of our model and the power of new stores. Existing stores consistently deliver against our profitability targets. New stores are delivering strong results amidst a dynamic and competitive environment, and small market tests have shown encouraging results, offering us a new growth opportunity. New stores consistently attract new members, and they also encourage multi-store and channel shopping, which we know increases spend per member.
We remain focused on investing to expand our footprint to capture more beauty demand. While we know the beauty landscape has evolved and distribution has expanded, we do not believe the market is oversaturated. In fact, we see significant future potential for store expansion. Our teams have done rigorous market assessments, and there are several factors that give us confidence in this market opportunity. First, the U.S. beauty market has expanded significantly, growing by more than $20 billion in annual sales since 2021. We believe about 75% of our DMAs have market share growth opportunities, and we are optimistic about category growth and the outlook, and that is why we see a clear pathway to get to 1,800+ standalone Ulta Beauty stores in the U.S. over the long term.
Later this morning, Paula will talk more about how we're thinking about real estate expansion from a financial perspective, but I'd like to now share more about our store expansion strategy. First, we will grow in our existing markets. Second, we will expand in small markets, focusing on communities with limited access to specialty beauty and capitalizing on untapped market share, and finally, as always, we will continue to test and learn with various store sizes, types, and locations. We will accelerate store openings with plans to open approximately 200 new stores in the U.S. over the next three years. We have proven that new store expansion drives incremental growth for our business, even more with a dynamic and competitive backdrop. Let's take our Dallas-Fort Worth market as an example. Between 2019 and 2023, we grew our store base by 20%, relocated three stores and remodeled two.
In doing so, we expanded our market share by about 450 basis points, grew our member base by about 20%, while at the same time increasing spend per member, omni-channel penetration, and the number of members shopping multiple stores, and importantly, we see growth opportunities in this market still going forward. We see opportunity to expand beauty access in smaller, less traditional markets... Now, as someone who grew up in a smaller city in Iowa, I know firsthand that access to beauty in smaller markets can be harder to come by, and we know consumers in these markets are passionate about beauty. We want to be the beauty destination for beauty enthusiasts everywhere. We've tested smaller markets like Wilson, North Carolina, where we see untapped beauty demand and where there is limited prestige and specialty beauty presence.
We've developed a compelling go-to-market strategy to bring our all things beauty model to these markets using a small format store format that includes a curated assortment of prestige and mass products, and a unique guest experience and human connection that only Ulta Beauty can deliver. We are excited to bring our experience to more beauty enthusiasts through our more expansive store footprint, because it's inside of our stores where we really unlock the power and joy of beauty through this human connection. This comes to life through several distinctive competitive advantages, starting with our people. We have the largest network of beauty experts in the industry that we affectionately call our Beauty Besties. Our store associates and stylists are the catalyst to ignite joy within our Ulta Beauty stores. They consistently deliver an engaging, immersive, and inclusive experience.
They bring the feeling of beauty to life for our guests, and it's their relentless commitment to serving our guests that grows loyalty and overall brand love. Our 42,000 store associates and 8,500 salon professionals are trusted advisors and have the greatest influence of our guest experience. They are the ones who bring our brand to life. We will continue to invest in our people to set them up for success through training, brand education, guest engagement playbooks, and digital tools. Now, services are another core and differentiating aspect of Ulta Beauty and a key driver of loyalty. Our licensed professionals and broad assortment of services set us apart and substantially deepen guest engagement and brand love through human connection. Our services guests tell us that they're looking for consistent and engaging services experiences, and we are delivering.
Guests who use our services love them, and they reward us with their loyalty. Salon service users spend three times more, and guests who engage with some of our more popular services reward us with even more spend, with hair and brow users spending five times more. With only about 5% of our members using services today, we see meaningful opportunity to drive awareness and trial. We will continue to invest in education and competitive compensation and benefits for our stylists to attract and retain the very best talent, and we will leverage loyalty and marketing to increase awareness and trial. Now, moving to events. Our signature events at Ulta Beauty deepen brand love by fostering a sense of community. They are brought to life through knowledgeable and friendly associates and brand partners, who play a critical role in making Ulta Beauty the place for beauty discovery.
To further unlock the value of this competitive advantage, we will implement digital tools to drive awareness and participation in signature events, and while I could share more with you about this experience, words don't fully capture it. Let's see how this really comes to life in our stores, and what's exciting is that we're just getting started. Stores are our most powerful asset, and we are focused on protecting and expanding our core differentiators to delight our guests and to drive member growth and spend. We will expand our store footprint, empower our associates and stylists with ongoing training and investments, leverage loyalty and marketing to increase awareness and trial of our distinctive services, and implement new tools to drive awareness and participation in events. Now, turning to e-commerce.
We have built a leading $2 billion-plus e-commerce business, which has grown by more than 20% on average annually over the last five years, and now represents about 20% of our sales versus 17% in 2019. We've transformed our experience and infrastructure to position our e-commerce business for growth and scalability. We've overhauled our digital store platform, modernizing our technology architecture, enabling flexibility and agility. Our new technology enables key areas for our experience, and it will continue to support our leadership in digital experiences. I'm proud of our team's effort to keep our guests at the center of this experience. We renovated the digital store while our guests were still actually shopping it. These investments have enabled us to deliver bold and immersive digital and e-commerce experiences.
Our digital channels showcase our assortment and allow guests to easily shop and discover new products and services. They are the epicenter of activity, bringing together our members and community with personalized experiences. We are focused on our app to seamlessly bring e-commerce, loyalty, and omni-channel capabilities together. Looking ahead, we will unlock the value of our digital investments to improve our guest experience, focusing on four key areas: personalization, community, discovery, and finally, focusing on our app advancement. We are going to be app-obsessed. Michelle highlighted our plans around personalization and community earlier, so let me touch on the discovery and our app. We've combined our deep understanding of the guest with tech advancements and AI to shape the way consumers discover and interact with beauty. As you've heard, beauty shoppers engage across physical and digital channels on their path to purchase.
It's no longer simply going to the store and just buying products. That's why we've continued to innovate, to create new ways to serve and engage with beauty enthusiasts. We've driven advances in our guest-centric suite of virtual try-on and AI-enabled skin and hair analysis experiences. We've created virtual communities and gamified shopping experiences that engage younger consumers, and we've piloted new and innovative in-store technologies to shape the future of omni-channel beauty experiences. Much of this has been powered jointly through our partnerships with innovative startup companies in our investment fund, Prisma Ventures. I'd like to share more of one of the ways we are driving discovery through our virtual try-on experience. Virtual try-on and AI tools are an important way for our guests to experience digitally, the look and feel of beauty, and we are an industry leader in this space.
We have continued to invest to extend our competitive advantage to build on our foundation, no pun intended, with additional experiences, including full shoppable makeup looks, fun AI filters, hairstyles and color try-on, skin analysis, AI-enabled hair analysis, and integrated foundation shade matching. This enabled us to surround our guests with tools to experience holistic beauty, so that they can explore an infinite number of possibilities to find their ideal products while shopping, both in store and online. They're simple to use, and as you can see, I can even create some good looks to use... Or maybe not. Not sure that the pink curls are a good look on me. All joking aside, these tools not only meet the rising guest needs, but they also drive higher conversion, and we're bringing this all together in our app, which will be the digital place to be in beauty.
We will captivate and engage our guests across the entire experience journey. We are proud of the progress we've made. We've transformed our digital infrastructure for more seamless and scalable operations, and we are delivering bold and innovative experiences that engage and inspire beauty enthusiasts. Looking forward, we will drive by accelerating personalization, community, discovery, and app obsession. Now, turning to our growing channels beyond our traditional channels. Through our partnership with Target, and soon, for the first time internationally, as we launch our winning model to Mexico in 2025. Our innovative partnership with Target offers a curated assortment that is designed to expand member engagement and introduce new guests to Ulta Beauty. It comes to life through a 1,000-sq-ft shop-in-shop store inside Target that features a highly curated beauty assortment of products with 70 brands.
It's launched since 2021, and we've continued to expand our partnership and currently have more than 500 locations open in the United States. And we are seeing this touchpoint playing in a complementary role to our ecosystem. It is attracting a different guest and meeting a different guest need. Shopping trips tend to be quick in-store trips with an elevated focus on trial size. The partnership is fueling discovery; it's giving guests new and convenient ways to engage with us, and we see it driving trade-up to prestige and fueling new brand discovery. It's also driving incrementality. We see members with linked accounts spending approximately two times the average member, and we continue to see increasing bounce-back member spend. And the future is bright.
We are excited to continue building on our partnership and driving loyalty through engaging with our guests, growing brand presence at Ulta Beauty at Target locations, and elevating our overall omni-channel experiences. Now, turning to international expansion. Beauty is a global category, and we believe Ulta Beauty's differentiated model positions us to succeed as a global brand. International expansion represents a key growth opportunity for Ulta Beauty over the long term. We couldn't be more excited about our first international market launch into Mexico in 2025. Mexico is an attractive and growing beauty market, with a passionate beauty enthusiast consumer base, and we see significant opportunity for a unique value proposition in the market. Through our joint venture in partnership with Grupo Axo, we plan to launch via an omni-channel model that will scale to approximately 100 stores across Mexico in the next few years.
We are excited about the progress we've made in building our assortment and securing key locations, and we remain on track to launch in 2025. In the same way Ulta Beauty has brought together beauty in a way that no one else had imagined in the U.S., we believe there is potential to bring our unique approach to other global markets beyond Mexico over the long term. We know the power of beauty is universal, and we will focus on prioritizing markets with large and growing beauty categories, strong beauty demand for our unique model, and attractive financial characteristics for Ulta Beauty. Finally, turning to our operational capabilities. I'd like to highlight how we've transformed our operating infrastructure over the last three years to enable new capabilities that position us for long-term growth.
As Dave previewed, we executed on five key transformations over the last few years, including upgrades to our enterprise resource planning, or ERP, system, supply chain network, store technology, data infrastructure, and digital architecture. You've already heard about several of these today, so let me just touch on the final two that we've not yet covered, the upgrade of our ERP system and the optimization of our supply chain, and how these two are really going to enable our growth. In twenty twenty-one, we announced Project SOAR, a multi-year transformation to upgrade our ERP platform and support our vision to strengthen, optimize, accelerate, and renew our core operations. This three-year journey was a significant undertaking, and I am proud of how our teams thoughtfully executed, working to minimize disruption to our guests, our vendors, and our associates.
We completed this transformation earlier this year, and we are already seeing the benefits, starting with real-time inventory visibility for our in-store associates, which allows them to get the right products to our guests. A centralized vendor portal that has enabled faster and easier collaboration and planning. Cloud-based system integration that eliminated this heavily customized legacy system, and a reduction in manual touch points for associates working across the system, creating new process efficiencies. In fact, we've streamlined over 170 processes, and we are now focused on optimizing the system and evolving our ways of working to fully realize the benefits from our investment. Turning to our supply chain, our strategy is centered around building a network to support store, e-commerce, and assortment growth.
Over the last several years, we've been focused on expanding our capabilities to increase speed to guests and stores and to drive cost efficiencies over time, all while supporting growth opportunities. We brought this vision to life and reached a significant milestone in 2023, including retrofitting our Greenwood distribution center and opening two market fulfillment centers, or MFCs, which have expanded our capacity to support additional stores and inventory. We've reduced manual processes through automation, expanded ship-from-store capabilities and same-day delivery, which helps us improve both speed to guests and operational efficiencies. Now, let's see this come to life in our new MFC here in Bolingbrook.
At the Ulta Beauty Bolingbrook Market Fulfillment Center, it's not just about automation, it's about innovation that empowers people. Watch as technology seamlessly integrates with human ingenuity to redefine the future of retail distribution. This isn't just a warehouse, it's a fulfillment powerhouse. The 300,000 sq ft facility services 120 stores and 20-25,000 e-commerce orders a day during holiday season. Efficiency meets precision as packages are swiftly routed to their destination. With automated cross-dock, we've eliminated unnecessary handling, as cartons flow from receiving directly to the outbound dock. It's a well-oiled machine, streamlining the flow of goods and maximizing efficiency. The very narrow aisle technology is a game changer. By cutting standard aisle width in half, we've increased storage capacity and improved safety. Meet our autonomous mobile robots.
These autonomous mobile robots are efficient and always ready to lend a hand. They free up our associates to focus on high-value tasks. At Ulta Beauty, we're not just building a distribution center, we're building a future where technology and human ingenuity work together to deliver exceptional results. It's a commitment to innovation, efficiency, and the ultimate guest experience.
How cool are those robots? We've made tremendous progress on our supply chain transformation and have learned a lot along the way. Now let's talk about where we're going. Going forward, we will leverage these key learnings to continue expanding our capacity, optimizing systems and processes, and improving our capabilities that support our growth and allow our brands to continue to grow with us. We will continue to transform our distribution center network across facilities, streamlining operating models, and introducing new automation to boost productivity and efficiency. We will expand ship from store capabilities to even more locations to supply guests with more fulfillment options. And finally, we will maintain focus on operational excellence, enhancing our transportation portfolio to drive improved delivery speed, operational efficiencies, and cost savings. We are proud of how our foundational investments have transformed our core operations.
Looking ahead, we will fuel our growth by further identifying, deploying, and scaling benefits for profitability. We are focused on minimizing costs and driving efficiencies through our ERP system. We are leveraging technology-driven advancements to further improve personalization, fulfillment options, and speed to guest. And we'll continue to scale the impact of our supply chain network to support the growing capacity needs. In closing, the transformative changes we have driven over the last three years position us to win, and we are excited to elevate our leading experience and bring it to even more beauty enthusiasts by expanding our core store footprint, doubling down on our immersive store experience, enhancing our e-commerce experience through innovation and even more seamless app experiences, and growing beyond our traditional channels at Ulta Beauty at Target and through our expansion into Mexico.
I'm incredibly proud of the progress that we've made and optimistic about the long runway for growth ahead for Ulta Beauty. Now I'll turn it over to Paula Oyibo, our Chief Financial Officer, to share more about our financial outlook.
Thank you, Keisha. Good morning, everyone. I'm Paula Oyibo, Ulta Beauty's Chief Financial Officer. Thank you for your engagement throughout the morning. We are in the final stretch. I'll provide a financial update, and then Dave will close us out before we start the Q&A. Ulta Beauty is a market leader in one of the healthiest consumer categories, and we have delivered strong, consistent, profitable growth and shareholder value. We see additional opportunities to expand our leadership position, and we are confident our plans will enable us to continue to deliver profitable growth and compelling shareholder value. My update today will focus on four areas. First, I want to ground us in the strength of our financial position. Second, I will share how we have performed against key goals from our twenty twenty-one investor event.
Then, I will discuss how our plans we've shared today position us to deliver long-term value creation. Finally, I'll address our capital allocation strategy. Starting with our healthy and profitable financial position. Over the last ten years, our business has grown significantly. Today, our revenue base is more than four times greater than 2013. Over this period, we have significantly increased our market share, especially in prestige beauty. Since 2013, we have expanded our footprint, opening 710 net new stores, and we've increased our loyalty member count by nearly 200%. Our e-commerce business has grown from a $150 million startup to a $2 billion business, and we have expanded our assortment and brand portfolio, building multibillion-dollar businesses across makeup, fragrance, skincare, and haircare, in addition to a nearly $400 million services business.
Strong revenue growth, combined with the evolution of our assortment and investments in the guest experience and operational capabilities, have enabled us to deliver compound annual growth of 18% in operating profit since 2013. From a margin rate perspective, our operating margin accelerated to extraordinary levels over the most recent three years as we chase demand in the pandemic recovery. When looking back, double-digit annual comp sales growth has fueled operating margin expansion and enabled us to generate and deliver between 12% and 13% of sales, some of the healthiest operating margins in retail. Healthy EPS growth, disciplined working capital management, and our commitment to maintaining low levels of leverage have given us flexibility to reinvest in the business and generate strong returns, while also consistently returning excess cash to shareholders.
Since launching our share repurchase program in 2014, we have purchased more than $6 billion of stock. Three years ago, we hosted an investor day and shared key financial targets we expected to deliver between the period of 2022 and 2024. Although this year has been more challenging than we expected, we have exceeded our 2021 goals, sales goals, diluted EPS, and our cost savings goals. We expected to reach $10 billion in revenue by 2024. We actually achieved $10.2 billion in 2022, one year after setting our goal, and we are on track to deliver $11 billion-$11.2 billion in sales this year. Our diluted EPS goal was to deliver low double-digit growth on a CAGR basis. We delivered 13.7% growth over the period.
We targeted $150 million-$200 million in cost savings, and we are on track to deliver approximately $300 million by the end of this year. Looking at operating margin, we meaningfully exceeded our target in 2022 and 2023. However, reflecting lower than expected revenue growth, our expectation for operating margin in 2024 is modestly below our 2021 target. We have invested thoughtfully to fuel growth, and as a result, we are stronger foundationally today than we were before the pandemic. As Dave shared earlier, we have expanded our fleet in digital businesses while upgrading our core operational infrastructure. In addition, we have enhanced our capabilities to enable greater personalization, enhanced guest experiences, and increased operational effectiveness. These investments and new capabilities will help fuel our next phase of market share expansion and profitable growth.
Now, turning to our updated financial targets. Longer term, we intend to deliver annual net revenue growth between 4% and 6% and mid-single-digit operating profit growth, while targeting operating margin around 12% of sales, which we believe we can expand over time. In addition, we are targeting low double-digit diluted EPS growth. So let's dig a little deeper into the drivers of our long-term targets, starting with revenue. Long term, we believe we can deliver annual net revenue growth between 4% and 6%. Underpinning this expectation is targeted annual comp growth of 3%- 4%, driven by what you've heard the team share today, including member growth, the expansion of wellness, as well as continued growth of our e-commerce business.
We expect other revenue will grow in line with total revenue, driven, primarily by continued growth of our partnership with Target Corporation, and we intend to accelerate new store openings to support our member growth and market share expansion goals. Our rigorous market assessment supports significant store expansion opportunity for Ulta Beauty, and today, we are confident we can profitably operate more than 1,800 standalone stores in the U.S., in addition to 800 Ulta Beauty at Target shop-in-shops. To capitalize on this opportunity, we intend to accelerate new store openings over the next three years, opening roughly 200 net new stores through 2027. Our new store performance has remained strong, consistently delivering returns greater than 20%. This, combined with the market share opportunity and our ability to tailor our format, gives us confidence in our store expansion goals.
A new store costs, on average, $2.1 million and has a payback period between three and four years. Looking at the maturation of a new store, new stores generate, on average, $4.1 million in the first year of sales and are accretive in year two and reach sales and profitability maturity around year five. Turning to operating profit, we are focused on driving annual operating profit dollar growth in the mid-single-digit range. This target provides us with flexibility to respond to an evolving environment and invest to drive growth while still enabling our financial goals. Now, we understand operating margin has been a key topic of debate, in part fueled by the strong gains we experienced after the pandemic.
Today, as we reflect on our size, our strong market position, and our long-term revenue expectations, we believe targeting operating margins of approximately 12% of sales allows us flexibility to continue to invest and lead in a growing, innovative category. Now, we want to be very clear that we think we can drive higher operating margins over time. But as we focus on re-accelerating growth and market share gains, precise operating margin targets are not the only consideration as we look to drive business and shareholder value. And similar to other leading, best-in-class retailers, we are most focused on delivering great guest experiences, delivering member growth and engagement, and delivering healthy sales, free cash flow, and profit growth.
We believe that these are the best, most sustainable drivers of long-term business value and are more critical than where operating margin land in any given year. As we consider the drivers of long-term operating profit growth, we see opportunities from our ongoing category management efforts as we continue to focus on improving the merchandise margin of our core categories and expand wellness, and from UB Media, as we continue to scale and expand that business. We expect additional productivity benefits from our supply chain as we continue to retrofit our distribution centers and optimize systems and processes. And we expect other revenue will continue to contribute to operating profit growth.
These drivers will help mitigate expected pressures from new store and IT investments to enhance the guest experience, accelerated efforts to strengthen our brand portfolio, and investments in advertising to drive new member acquisition and retention, as well as headwinds from wage rate growth and increased depreciation in IT expenses associated with our infrastructure investments. Of course, we will continue to optimize our operations and eliminate non-value-added costs. Since 2019, we have delivered $550 million in cost savings through our optimization efforts across merchandising, real estate, and operational process improvement. We know that there are additional opportunities, and we are actively evaluating reductions in our cost structure while also driving optimization and operational efficiencies. Over the next three years, we are targeting cost takeout efforts of $200-$250 million to help fuel our investments and deliver operating profit growth.
We will continue to leverage our scale and drive value from our real estate portfolio and indirect procurement efforts. And we will target cross-functional opportunities, like end-to-end product flow and inventory management processes, to reduce costs and drive greater operational efficiency. In addition, with our new IT infrastructure in place, we are shifting to system optimization with a focus on identifying new technology-enabled ways of working to drive efficiency and deliver an optimized guest experience. Turning to diluted EPS growth. Reflecting our revenue and operating profits, we expect to deliver annual diluted EPS growth in the low double-digit range, with share repurchase contributing approximately five points of this EPS growth annually. We believe these long-term growth targets are sustainable, enables us to continue to reinvest in an innovative and growing category while also delivering attractive shareholder returns.
We will provide specific guidance for twenty twenty-five in March, when we report our year-end results, as we normally do. But we want to be transparent about how we're thinking about next year. We expect twenty twenty-four and twenty twenty-five to be transitional years as we manage through near-term category dynamics and accelerate investments to reinforce our competitive differentiation. We expect near-term actions we are taking will reignite the top line, enable us to return to comparable sales growth in twenty twenty-five. However, we expect our comp sales growth will be below our long-term target of 3%-4%. We expect operating margin will be further pressured and below our long-term target, primarily reflecting fixed cost and expense deleverage resulting from our revenue growth expectations. In addition, the actions we are taking now to reinforce our leadership position will continue next year.
As you heard today, we intend to stand up several new initiatives necessary to drive growth and market share expansion over the long term. Within this framework, we will continue to exercise financial discipline and aggressively pursue cost reduction. Shifting to capital allocation, we will continue to pursue a disciplined capital allocation strategy. Our priorities remain unchanged. In addition to efficiently funding ongoing operations, we are focused on reinvesting in the business to drive growth, maintaining capital expenditures between 4% and 5% of sales, and returning excess cash to our shareholders through share repurchases. We intend to maintain low leverage levels and are not contemplating any material M&A activity in the near to medium term. Our first and best use of cash is to reinvest in the business to drive growth.
Over the last three years, we have invested $1.2 billion across stores, IT, and supply chain. About 58% of our capital has been invested to expand and enhance our fleet and improve the guest experience in our stores, with 25% of capital supporting the upgrade of our IT infrastructure and 17% to upgrade our supply chain operations and extend capacity. Looking forward, we continue to target capital expenditures between 4% and 5% of sales, with a greater focus on investing in our store fleet as we accelerate new store openings and enhance guest experiences in existing stores, and the remainder to fund IT upgrades and capabilities and continue supply chain expansion. Stores remain the highest returning investment across the enterprise, consistently generating returns greater than 20%, which is why we believe accelerating new store openings will drive growth and shareholder value.
Our business consistently generates strong operating cash flow, more than enough to fund our operations and support our investment agenda. We will continue to return excess cash to shareholders through stock repurchases. This year, we expect to purchase approximately $1 billion of stock, and today, I am pleased to share that our board of directors has approved a new share repurchase authorization of $3 billion. As I close, I want to underscore a few points. Our strong operating model is driving shareholder value, and our financial foundation is healthy. We are a bigger, more profitable company today. We will continue to invest and optimize to drive profitable growth, and we are committed to maintaining a disciplined capital allocation strategy that supports our growth aspirations and delivers shareholder value. And now, Dave will wrap us up before we start the Q&A.
Great. Thank you again for joining us and your active engagement throughout the day, and I'm looking forward to our Q&A session together. On behalf of the entire team, we appreciate the opportunity to share with you our vision for the bright, bright future of Ulta Beauty. Now, I started our day today sharing these six points that give us confidence going forward. We've delivered outstanding results over time. We operate in a healthy, growing, dynamic category. We have a proven, differentiated business model. We are actively investing to power our growth. We have an exceptionally talented team, and we have the right strategies to gain share and deliver shareholder value over the long term. Now, I hope our time together has reinforced each of these as we detailed the path ahead for Ulta Beauty.
Our strategy is strong, with a clear focus on leveraging our existing strengths while driving compelling innovation to reach new guests and engage existing guests in all that we have to offer. Ulta Beauty is the destination for beauty enthusiasts for a lifetime, and we will drive profitable growth and share leadership through our four focus areas: assortment, experience, access, and loyalty, all of which we believe are central to delight and inspire all beauty enthusiasts for the years ahead. These growth drivers are underpinned by a focus on operational excellence and optimization to drive profitability, and most importantly, our aspirations are guided by a powerful team that is committed to our guests and the impact we have on the world.
Our growth model is anchored in increasing both member count and member spend, and our long-term strategy is built to deliver on both of these important metrics. We'll reach more beauty enthusiasts, drive deeper loyalty, and capture greater share of their beauty and wellness wallet going forward. We've shared a robust strategy with you today, and I hope you have a clear vision of our path forward, the primary growth drivers in our plan, and the key investment areas as we focus on driving share growth. So to summarize, in assortment, we'll continue to lead trends and drive growth in our core categories. We will expand and invest in our compelling portfolio of exclusive, new, established, and emerging brands to further differentiate our assortment, and we'll further establish our leadership position in wellness.
In experience, we'll use the power of our team to elevate human connections in stores and salons by investing in education and experiences that truly differentiate Ulta Beauty. In access, we'll accelerate new store openings while investing in the digital and omni experiences to better meet our guests wherever and whenever they want to shop for beauty. And we'll expand access to more guests through Ulta Beauty at Target and international expansion. In loyalty, we'll invest in marketing to reach new beauty enthusiasts and high-opportunity cohorts, and at the same time, we'll continue to enhance our program to elevate retention while connecting our members to all that Ulta Beauty has to offer. We are confident in our plan and are focused on delivering all of this with absolute excellence. The growth strategies we outlined today will allow us to deliver on our long-term targets.
Delivering these results will ensure Ulta Beauty continues to gain share and advance our position as the leader in beauty. Now, to wrap up, we could not be more excited for the future of Ulta Beauty as we continue to shape the future of beauty retail. So I want to leave you with three key messages. First, we have a strong position in a growing and dynamic category.... Second, we have a proven business model, and we are investing to make it even stronger. We have clear strategies to drive growth. And third, we have a powerful team and culture that is ready to go. I stand here today very optimistic about the future of Ulta Beauty. So on behalf of the Ulta Beauty leadership team, thank you again for being here today and for your interest in Ulta Beauty.
And now, for your favorite part of the day, we're gonna take a moment to prepare for our Q&A session. So while we do that, please, enjoy this video, which highlights our Ulta Beauty Charitable Foundation, and we'll be back for Q&A.
At the heart of Ulta Beauty, we believe beauty is a force for good. It helps power our social impact work and will leave a positive legacy for our world. We see well-being holistically, encompassing mind, body, and how we connect with others. Positive well-being enhances our relationships, improves our physical health, and boosts our confidence. Ulta Beauty Charitable Foundation supports just that. We help women and teens unleash possibilities to navigate this ever-changing world. Our holistic approach connects them to experiences that help build coping skills, healthy bodies, and supportive relationships. It's about supporting mental, physical, and social health. We embrace this work across diverse communities in the U.S. through our portfolio of partnerships with leading nonprofits. Our efforts seek to enhance mental health awareness, promote self-acceptance, and foster meaningful connections.
Our associates have shown time and again the power of volunteering their unique skills and expertise, mentoring, and simply being there for those in need. As we continue to expand our work, our goal is to provide even more volunteer opportunities. We're also there for our associates and communities in times of need, ensuring that they feel seen and empowered when facing unforeseen hardship. As we look to the future, we're inspired by what we've achieved and the opportunities that lie ahead. We invite you to share your passion and support to help us achieve our mission to change lives, empower well-being, and spread joy. Together, we can use the power of beauty to make a positive impact on our world.
All right. Great, so for our Q&A session, I've asked our entire executive team to join me on stage, so let's review how you can ask questions during the Q&A session. For those of you joining via the webcast, you can submit questions at any time using the Ask a Question tab on the right-hand side of your screen. For those of you joining here in the room, you can use the QR code on your table to submit a question, or you can step up to either of the two microphones here in the front of the room. We will alternate questions between the room and questions from the webcast.
For those of you asking questions here in the room, please feel free to start lining up, and when you ask a question, state your name and your firm before asking your question. And, as always, I guess I have to say this again, when we'd like to accommodate as many questions as possible, during our 45 minutes for this session, so please limit your question to one question and no more than 45 follow-up questions. Right? Okay. And, so before we get started, though, I'd like... You've met several of our team members here, but I'd like the rest of our team to introduce themselves, and I'm gonna ask Anita to get us started.
Thank you so much, Dave. My name is Anita Ryan. I am proud to lead the people success team as the CHRO, which is Chief HR Officer, and I've been privileged to be part of the Ulta Beauty family for twenty-two years.
Hi, my name is Mike Maraska. I'm equally proud to lead our technology organization as the Chief Technology and Information Officer. I've been with Ulta for just a year, but it's been an amazing year.
Hi, my name is Jodi Caro. I'm Ulta Beauty's General Counsel, and I lead our legal, regulatory, risk, and compliance functions. I'm also proud to lead our ESG and the Ulta Beauty Charitable Foundation. I've been with Ulta Beauty for nine and a half years.
Hi, everybody. My name is Erik Lopez. I lead our supply chain as our Chief Supply Chain Officer, and I've been with Ulta for about 11 years.
Good morning, everyone. I'm Amiee Bayer-Thomas, and I have the good fortune, and am extremely proud as well, to lead our stores as Chief Store Operations Officer, which includes our fourteen hundred incredible stores and fifty thousand associates, along with our loss prevention and corporate store and services operations teams. I've been with Ulta Beauty. I celebrated eight years last month.
Great. All right, let's go ahead and get started, and we can start. And remember, please introduce yourself and your firm, and we'll get going.
Okay. Thanks for my question. Rupesh Parikh, Oppenheimer. So just going back to an earlier slide, you guys talked about having about 600 brands today. Just curious how that's trended over time, and then, you know, as you look forward, do you expect the number of brands to continue to increase? I'm just trying to get a sense. You know, obviously, there's more marketplaces out there, so just want to try to get a sense of how you guys are thinking about the eventual brand portfolio from a number of brands perspective.
Great question about our brands. Monica, do you want to talk about brand growth?
Yeah, absolutely. I would say it's pretty fluid. The number of brands is always going to evolve based on how we look at our assortment across the categories, across the segments, and then, as I shared with you, the four types of brands. So, you know, we certainly have opportunity to continue to evolve the assortment. We look at productivity, and that allows us to optimize the space in our store. We have lots of opportunity in e-com and through our supply chain capabilities, so we have the ability to expand further, and all of it will really be based on, you know, what are the trends, where are we seeing high growth, and where we have the opportunity to expand.
And then my one follow-up question, just for Paula, just in terms of FY twenty-five, I think you may have mentioned that you expect operating margins to be low - be below that 12% target. Is that correct for FY twenty-five?
Yes. Yes.
Okay, thank you.
Great, thanks.
Thanks. Mike Baker from D.A. Davidson. So I wanted to ask about competition. Seems like there's been three areas of increased competition, maybe the Sephora store within a store in Kohl's, Amazon, Prestige Beauty, and maybe even cannibalization from Target. So if you could talk about each of those, and in particular, within the Sephora store within a store, that's now fully cycled, right? That was fully built out as of 3Q 2023. So are you seeing any alleviation in the pressure point from that? Thanks.
Great. Well, yes, as we talked about throughout the day, certainly this category is very attractive. It has long been an attractive category for retailers to participate in. And so we are very used to a high level of competition. We are seeing that evolve as we've come out of the pandemic, in particular, with increased, you know, points of presence in the prestige space. So just briefly to highlight on some of the areas that you talked about. First, I'll go to the last one you mentioned first. You know, Target is a core partner. They are a strategic growth partner for us to find incremental ways to delight our guests and to reach new members. And so we see that growth as part of our total proposition.
But the other two that you talked about, you know, certainly have been emerging. The incremental points of presence. I talked on our second quarter call about, you know, over a thousand new physical points of presence in the prestige space. 80% of our stores have had one of these locations open up within the trade area. 50% of our stores have had two or more in the trade area, so it has had an impact. We've. We actually feel, you know, good about the way we've been able to manage through this, continuing to drive our business, grow our loyalty, you know, member program, grow share in prestige skin and prestige fragrance, continue to delight our guests with brand love and brand awareness.
So we feel like we're navigating it well, and, you know, we understand the dynamic. We've competed effectively, you know, historically, and we think the strategies and proposition that we've outlined today will enable us to continue to manage that going forward. So, we are in a period of time of this expansion, but we see opportunity. I also mentioned on the second quarter call that stores eighty percent have had an impact. The twenty percent that haven't did comp positively in the second quarter. And so we see, you know, signals that give us confidence going forward, and that's included in our outlook for the rest of this year.
As far as online competitors, we've been competing with Amazon and others for a long time. They've had a big business in mass, in hair. They're expanding in prestige, so we know how to compete in the prestige area. For the first half of the year, we held share in prestige e-com. And so we're, you know, we're accustomed to it, but we're obviously aware of the expansion. What will allow us to win in that space is really everything we talked about: assortment, exclusivity, experience. We are the... I talked about the idea that all price points, all categories, and all channels, to have both in-store and online.
Even young consumers have an overwhelmingly strong preference to shop in-store versus online, and that we see continuing, and so our experience, and then, of course, our availability and access through new stores, so we'll continue to compete against that, and we're confident in our ability to do so.
Great. Thanks for that.
Let's go to the online.
Okay, so one question we have is around makeup. So any thoughts on the weakness in the cosmetics category, particularly in mass? How long do these cycles usually last, and what do you think is gonna drive re-engagement?
Great. Monica, do you wanna add something?
Okay. Well, I talked a little bit about this earlier today. So first of all, it's very important for us to drive our complete makeup category. So I shared earlier that about 30% of our business is done in mass and about 70% in prestige. We have continued to have solid growth on the mass side of the business, and as we've shared, we've been a little bit more pressured on the prestige side of the business. And as I shared, we are very committed to reignite growth. Some of the ways that we see doing that are leaning into those trends that I talked about a bit earlier and bringing in brands and/or exclusive products or products within our existing brand portfolio to drive those trends.
In addition, when you think about brands that we recently launched, like Charlotte Tilbury, and last year, we expanded luxury. With that, we enhanced and elevated the aesthetic and the visual merchandising within our prestige area to really engage guests into the categories. In addition, across our established brands, like Lancôme and Clinique and MAC, we've invested in more associate labor to better educate and serve our guests and drive increased basket.
And then I shared that while I can't divulge, we have a very strong pipeline in place for 2025 and beyond. And so those are really the key areas that we're leaning into, and that's across mass and prestige, but I specifically really wanted to zero in on some of the efforts that we have put in place for prestige makeup.
Great. Thanks, Monica.
Okay, thanks. Simeon Gutman, Morgan Stanley, and I have one and one follow-up, Dave.
Okay.
Okay. My first question is on the 12% EBIT margin. Paula mentioned there could even be upside to that over time. If you take the 3% to 4% comp growth and then some of the takes, the investments that you plan to make, while more reasonable long term, it's not necessarily a layup either, holding 12%. How would you push back to that, and how crucial are the cost takeout in order to maintain that 12%?
Yeah. Thank you for the question, Simeon. So first, what I would say, and I think Rupesh kind of clarified this, for twenty twenty-five, we've said that we expect that to be lower than our long-term target. What I will share is that for twenty twenty-five, we will manage that at least above 11%. And so then, as we think about the 12% from a go-forward perspective, there's a couple dynamics at play. You know, on a growth of 4%-6% and a 3-4 comp, we believe that we'll be able to drive more operating profit. And with that, we also see that in the twenty twenty-five, some of the investments that we're making in twenty twenty- twenty...
So beyond 2025, the investments that we're making in 2025, to reaccelerate our top line and to, you know, do a bit of the start-up efforts around some of the strategic priorities, that will start to normalize, which will help us from a operating margin perspective beyond 2025. But what I would also say, and I shared this in my remarks, is that that's just one KPI that we are looking at, right? We are focused on operating profit growth, and our goal will be to ensure that our operating profit is growing at least at or above our revenue growth. And sometimes we may choose to invest SG&A in order to drive operating profit growth.
So we feel really confident in our ability to maintain to grow in this competitive category at the rate that we shared, 4%-6%, and maintain an operating margin of at least 12%.
And the follow-up is, you have 44 million loyal customers, we're on the cusp of AI, you have one of the richest data sets, you have one of the most captive customer bases. What should we take away how AI or how you're activating AI today? And then to clarify, you mentioned Adobe.
Mm-hmm.
Is this a decision to partner, or could this have been a decision to build, and then you run all of the technology behind AI?
Yeah, great, great question. I'm glad you asked, 'cause this is a big, huge area of focus for us, because exactly what you said, the power of the data. We think we've got unique capabilities. Maybe, Mike, you could give some overview of how we think broadly, then, and Michelle, maybe some specifics as it comes to life through our guests.
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Dave, and thanks for the question. AI is not new to Ulta. We've been using AI to really run a more effective retail organization, but to really elevate the guest experience. You know, examples include just how we forecast customer demand, so we get the right product in the right place. You saw our virtual try-on capability, which is built on an AI infrastructure. Even the personalization engine, you know, personalization agenda that we've had and continue to build upon, and that's where it gets really exciting. We are exploring Gen AI, and we're, like most companies, we're in the early days for that. But it's allowing us to accelerate capabilities, even in IT, in terms of building capabilities faster.
We're actually using it to engage guests as part of guest services, be more conversational with some of the bots, so we can meet their needs in real time. Of course, this pursuit of a personalization engine that is being driven through that Adobe partnership, and that's where I think, Michelle, you can probably expand on that.
Yeah. So as you know, loyalty is our key differentiator for us, and a critical pillar for growing that is personalization. And so Adobe, direct to your question, is a strategic partnership for us to unlock capabilities. So Mike mentioned a couple of them, but let's think about what our North Star is, and I did mention that earlier in the presentation. This concept of an automated, real-time, personalized engine that can curate content at any point in time based on signals from within our walls and outside our walls, so that we can serve up content straight away. So imagine, if I could give one minute, and I can explain. Say, for instance, someone's running out of their concealer today. All of a sudden, you're running out of concealer, but last night you were searching Halloween trends.
All of a sudden, through this partnership, we'll be able to take signals, for instance, using our loyalty data set, that you're probably overdue to buy a concealer.
…but also, we saw that signals that you were looking at Halloween trends. And therefore, when you go into a social media channel, we can serve up content to you that is curated based on Halloween trends, and also can serve up a brand that you love already, that you've probably bought already, maybe two or three times, and we can serve that up in social media. And when you go onto our app, you will instantly see within the app, or if you wanna go in the web, For You recommendation. And then based on that, maybe you'll add it to your cart, but maybe you won't check out, 'cause sometimes you want to think about it. You may want to check more social media reviews, et cetera.
And then you'll be followed up with an email reminding you of all the great points that you can really grow if you buy that concealer. Now, that's just one example. There's probably some of us today that forgot to bring their concealer, just like me, and that made me think about how a strategic partnership like Adobe can really unlock the growth in our loyalty program.
Great. Thank you.
Thanks, Suzanne. I'm gonna go here.
Hi. Thanks. Lorraine Hutchinson from Bank of America. I was hoping to get more insight into the decision to accelerate store openings while comps are below your longer-term targets. How many of these stores will be in new markets versus existing, and how are you thinking about cannibalization versus your stores or your Target partner stores?
Yeah, well, it's something we're very confident and excited about, and maybe, Keisha, you can give some more color.
Yeah, absolutely. You know, as Paula mentioned, our stores are one of our most valuable assets, and they generate a lot of cash. When we just announced our acceleration of 200 stores over the next 3 years, that was one of the big planning decisions in that. There's really 3 other categories, I think, that give us confidence that we should be driving that, and that is, you're right, it has been a little bit more of a disruptive market with a lot of competitors out there today, but our new store openings are still performing very, very well. So we're very confident that even in a competitive environment, we're performing. The second, I mentioned our store portfolio as a whole. We're very profitable. We run a very profitable fleet.
We have got really good rigor, and because of our rich data that we have with our members, we can see where we should be putting stores. The third is the new market opportunity with smaller communities. There's untapped market share out there for us to be able to go, be a little bit more aggressive, and be on the offense with that. And then the fourth is, you know, I was talking in my remarks earlier about the 75% of our DMAs, which is where we're established, we see visibility that we can put more stores in there and continue to take more share. We are positioning ourselves to win in the future, because it's all about driving growth, and we can do it in a profitable way.
Thank you.
Great. Thanks. Kylie?
I'm also gonna call an audible, looking at this line, and maybe suggest that no follow-up questions. But you can make that choice.
Yeah, why don't we do that? Do we-
Wait, no. No, I still need to ask my question.
Oh. I thought you were giving a follow-up.
Oh, no, no. No, it was not-
Go ahead.
Okay.
Right.
From the web, promotions weren't a focus of today's presentations. Do you believe you have to invest in price to reignite comp store sales growth? Yes or no, and if no, why not? And how are you seeing the promotional environment evolving over the next couple of years?
Yeah, well, promotion, of course, is a core part of our strategy. It's not the lead element of our strategy, but it plays a part of our overall mix, and something that we, you know, have a wide portfolio. Monica, maybe you can give some color on how we think about promotions.
Yeah.
and the role it plays.
You know, we're laser focused on watching what's happening within our own business, as well as competitively, and so we really look at our promotional levers across three key aspects. Our tentpole events and brand-driven events, which are primarily brand funded, and then our loyalty events, which are primarily Ulta funded and sometimes funded by our brands, and we're very strategic, and we're very thoughtful about how we amplify and drive these events and the cadence of these events over time and looking at seasonality, and so, for example, within our tentpole events, 21 Days of Beauty, which hopefully you all know, that is very strategic in driving mass migration, mass guests to then spend on prestige. It also brings new to brand into all of our prestige brands across all categories.
Fall Haul, which is also a tentpole event, is more of a mass-driven event, and it drives traffic and new guests into Ulta Beauty, and then our brand-driven events are also very strategic and thoughtful because we work with our brands, you know, on what is it that they want to do. Most of the time, it's obviously driving brand awareness and getting guests to become new to the brand and drive more basket, and then we work very collaboratively with the marketing team, so merchandising and marketing together, to look at where we have opportunity on loyalty, and the beautiful thing about that is we're very targeted, and so, you know, we look to incent guest behavior to get new guests coming in, lapsed guests coming in.
Maybe something that's very targeted based on something that, the category that we know that, they're interested in, and we can incent, you know, trial and basket, in other categories. So we work very closely together, and in terms of your question on, do we see, how do we see that evolving? I would also say this is really fluid, and so, you know, based on what's happening in the market, and what's happening within beauty in terms of our core, we will adapt and adjust, based on what we think is gonna be the best thing to incent and motivate our guests to come in and, explore more and spend more with us.
Thank you.
... Thanks, Chris Horvers, J.P. Morgan. So I have a quick follow-up on 2025, and then the real question.
Okay.
I guess, Paula, is the implication that you're saying that your expectation is earnings are down next year, or is it perhaps flat? Because if you hold a minimum of 11, buy back 5, open stores of 5, seems like you're implying a down earnings growth year. And then my follow-up is really on the brand access side. You've done a great job over Ulta's history, getting new brands, but that, you know, if you look back over the past few years, you've had a few very large, fast-growing prestige brands that you either don't have, got on a delay, or don't have it in all the stores. You've got some brands expanding on Amazon. So, you know, has the relationship with the brands changed 'cause it's so critical to the story here?
How are you changing your processes so you are ahead of the curve in terms of the next great prestige growth brand? Thank you.
Paula, why don't you start with the-
Sure.
Twenty twenty-five.
So what we shared is for 2025, while we are very confident that our actions that we're putting in place now will provide us with the growth and the share recovery that we're looking for, we know that it will take some time, and so we expect the comp growth to be below that long-term target of 3-4, as well as the operating margin and below the 12 and EPS below our target as well. And so what I would say is that, you know, we're still in our planning cycle, and we still have a very important quarter ahead for us, and so we will continue to evaluate the dynamics.
We have also shared, you know, about our cost reduction program, and when we report our earnings in March, we'll be in a better position to share more color around the various components of 2025.
Great, and let me start with some thoughts on your question, important question around brand, our brand growth, our relationship with our brand partners. And then, Monica, I'll ask you to provide a little bit more color, but I'll just say, you know, I'm really proud of the partnership we have with all of our brands, and the opportunity we have to continue to expand our portfolio. Monica mentioned we have a rich portfolio of a rich pipeline ahead of us, and that is reflective of the opportunity that we provide to our brands. Yes, there have been some brands that have grown outside of Ulta. We have access to those, many we've launched, others will come. There's been brands that have grown at Ulta that then expand.
It is just part of the nature of this category. We're proud of what we've delivered. We're proud of the brand relationships. We're especially proud of the exclusives that Monica highlighted, and more coming. So we understand the dynamics. We've been in this game for a long time, and we certainly feel very confident in our ability to both grow our existing portfolio and attract emerging and big established brands that aren't currently with Ulta. But maybe, Monica, you could talk and reinforce why brands choose to come with us, and then how we're getting ahead of some of the trends with our exclusive and emerging brands.
Yeah, perfect. Okay, I appreciate that question quite a bit and know that the merchant team is, you know, we're highly, highly aware of brands that are driving growth, and as Dave said, you know, very aggressive in going after those brands. You know, we have built a super strong portfolio of brands, and one of the things that is really important for our brands are all the things that we offer. You know, the robust loyalty program, the strong network of stores, the reach with Ulta Beauty at Target, the fact that our e-com is growing, the fact that we serve guests in many ways, however they wanna shop, BOPIS, you know, curbside, all of those things.
And then, you know, we're a warm experience, the warm face of beauty and our store teams in providing an amazing experience. So those are all things that our brands look to and love because we can build that awareness because of our reach. But, you know, I will say this is an area that we're gonna continue to lean in on and invest in to drive our exclusive portfolio and some of those really new, exciting, emerging brands that we see opportunity to grow.
And some of the things that help propel that are the fact that we're expanding our store fleet, that we're going into other markets that have opportunities, that we're launching internationally, that we have this incredible UB Media network, retail network, that we can really help leverage the brand's marketing dollar to reach more consumers and bring them in. And so those type of things are areas that we're really, the merchant team, many are here, and I will be leaning in with our brand partners to continue to be the destination for new brands or brands that have launched, and we know that we can further scale.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Yep.
Hi, Oliver Chen, TD Cowen. Thank you. Personalization is something you've done really well in the past. What's different now going forward, and how would you link personalization to customer lifetime value, operating margins or transactions?
Mm-hmm.
Our store checks also indicate ERP implementation can be tough. It's a great opportunity for more accuracy, but what's happening now with the ERP system and inventory accuracy and availability?
... Okay, so great, great questions on the personalization. You're right, we've been, I think, Michelle highlighted, we've been on this journey for a while, and it is adding real meaningful value. So maybe, Michelle, you can just give. I know you talked about it a minute ago with some of the AI, but maybe any other color we wanna add on where we're going, and then the value it adds to our guest. And then, Kecia, maybe you can pick up on the ERP question.
Markdown optimization as it intersects with personalization would be interesting.
Okay. Yeah.
So if we think about personalization, why are we doing it? It's fundamentally to build brand love and grow our loyalty membership program. It's a critical enabler to do that, and we've been on that journey since 2018. What is fundamentally different now is this North Star, where when we're partnering with Adobe and also using our own systems. Remember, we have our own proprietary recommendations AI engine, and when we can complete this whole circle of surrounding our guests, we're able to deliver contextualized, real-time, curated content with no manual intervention. That is the holy grail of personalization, and that fundamentally what will be very different.
Mm-hmm.
Sorry, I'm short and sweet that answer.
Yeah, just one thing I would also add, though. You threw in the markdown optimization. One of the things that we're doing in supply chain is, and one of the processes that we're unlocking, is the openness of shipping inventory from anywhere, especially from our stores. So if a return comes into a store that's an online type return, it will be unlocked and be able to be shipped out of that store to be prioritized, if it's new product that's not been opened, et cetera. So that's some of the new technology that we're working on right now. And then in regards to the ERP, thank you for recognizing that it's a difficult journey to be on, and I'm really glad that we're through the majority of it now.
What I would say is that the last phase of our ERP upgrade touched our DCs, our stores, and our merchandising systems. The DCs, things went overall pretty darn smooth. The store transition, you can't do a Big Bang theory on a store deployment. You have to do a slow roll. As we were running stores on multiple systems, it does create complexity, especially for, like, that inner hub, especially around inventory. So there were some challenges as we were running on dual systems. We are through that now. So the challenges that we're seeing are really... We were on long legacy systems for quite a period of time, highly customized. Pretty big change management curve to go through. We're working through that. We're very confident about that.
The training and the retraining of going off of a customized legacy type platform to more of a standardized profile, some training opportunities. And then the third would be optimizing that main, the basic platform that was highly customized before. We've got to fine-tune it and make some tweaks. We've got clear visibility to what it is that we need to do to tweak the system. As I mentioned on the second quarter earnings call, we're very confident in our inventory position going into the holiday, that we're, we've got a full court press, we've got clear visibility, we've got all eyes on this, and it's a very cross-functional team that's engaged because inventory is very important for the holiday season. So we're confident that, for holiday, that we'll be fine, and we'll continue to work through.
And quite frankly, we're excited to have the majority of, like, this whole ERP system done, so we can start to really maximize and unlock some of the benefits that are gonna come from it because they're vast. Being on this highly customized system that if you wanted to make one change, you had to unravel everything. To unlock that, and we've kept all custom code off of the main system, is gonna be a game changer for us in the future, and we're really excited about that.
So, you don't see risk to holiday related to ERP?
I don't see the what?
Risk to holiday.
Risk to holiday.
No, no, we do not see risk for holiday related to ERP.
Thank you very much.
There you go. Great, thanks, Oliver.
So you talked earlier about some of the increased competition. Can you speak to the threat of off-price and the opportunity from the pharmacy and convenience store closings that we're seeing?
I'll just kind of reiterate one of the things I shared earlier is where we see growth coming in the total category. Specialty, you know, some of the shop-in- shop, like our partnership with Target, online. We have seen off-price grow. It plays a different role in the category. We're certainly aware of that. We're watching that, but we understand, you know, that is, you know, guests who... The beauty enthusiast behavior, while that may be a small element in their shopping journey and experience, what we deliver is very differentiated, and so we are watching that.
And then certainly, there's been some other, I guess, share in other segments of the space, with some store closings, that are players in beauty, and so that will continue to evolve. This is a highly competitive category. It is never standing still. We though feel like we're confident that we're in the spaces that consumers really value, and it's up to us, through our strategies, to make sure that we're winning in that environment. Okay, let's go.
Hi, Michael Binetti with Evercore. Thanks for taking all our questions. Paula, maybe just a bit of a follow-up on a couple of your earlier questions. Maybe you could talk us through some of the dynamics that would cause the operating margin to be closer to 11 next year versus 12. Or maybe said differently, what are you doing in 2025 to help drive your confidence to the positive comp, the comp inflecting back to positive? Just to help us think about some of the drivers and pressures on the operating margin slide that you put up, maybe which ones of those are distorted next year to keep us on the edge of our seat till March guidance.
Mm-hmm.
Then, the follow-up would be, you almost doubled the TAM for customers in the category today by bringing in men and young children, or younger customers, sorry, and then some of the new categories that you're offering. What informs the low to mid-single digit category growth?
... given that huge step up in the TAM, and there's, is there a potential that that's conservative?
Okay. You wanna start?
Yeah, I'll start with the question on why is it more below the 12% for 2025. First, I would say, we are confident that we will be able to return to comparable sales growth in 2025, and that is really a reflection of some of the actions we've taken this year in order to strengthen our competitive position. And then we will also continue to make some investments to drive a stronger top line in 2025. And so we feel good about being able to return to comparable growth.
As you think about operating profit, the below the 12% in 2025 is really a reflection of the fact that we will have deleverage of fixed cost and expenses from below the long-term target from a comp perspective, right? And so that's a component of it, as well as the incremental investments we've talked about making in 2025 to reposition ourselves competitively and set ourselves up for long-term growth.
And then if we think about some other pressures for 2025, you know, we will have incentive comp that we will be lapping that'll put some pressure from a operating margin perspective in 2025, as well as continued depreciation expense from some of the investments that we've made this year that will impact us from a leverage perspective on a lower top line. And then, as we've shared before, I mean, we continue to experience inflation across the business. Our wage rates are increasing, and so that will also be a factor for 2025. But like I've said before, we will of course always still maintain financial discipline.
We will be looking for opportunities to take out cost in the business so that we can strengthen the overall operating profit and margin profile for twenty twenty-five as we lead into the beyond and towards our long-term targets.
Great, thanks. And then your question around TAM, yeah, what we, you know, wanted to communicate here is an updated, more expansive view of where we see the category going. You know, three years ago, when we were together, we talked about it through that lens of women eighteen plus, which is still the kind of core of the category and will be going forward.
but as we've seen, both our business, the category evolve, you know, we wanted to make sure we were fully representing the value and the opportunity that's ahead of us, and that's what you know had us expand our view to this hundred and forty, which does include teenagers, which, as I talked about today, has always been a focus for us, and we're proud to have a strong business with teens seen as a top preferred destination for sure, and then men getting more, and particularly young men getting into the category represents an opportunity, so that has been part of the category growth over the last couple of years. Gen Z has been a big driver of the category.
Men getting into the category has been part of it, and they will be contributing. I highlighted some of the, you know, core elements, the five big things that we see driving the category of which, a more expansive view of beauty, demographic trends, the connection to beauty and wellness will deliver. So those that more expansive view not only gives us confidence in the category growth that we see ahead, but also points us in the direction of how we wanna focus our business and our efforts to make sure we're tapping into new cohorts. Thanks for the question.
So, Dave, I think we have time for one more question.
Okay.
Sure.
Make it a good one.
Hi, Korinne Wolf, Piper Sandler. Thanks for taking the question. I'd like to clarify a few things around the unit growth outlook and hopefully get a little bit more color. First, on the 200 over the next couple of years, any color on the cadence of those openings over the next several years?
Mm-hmm.
How much are gonna be smaller format stores versus larger format? Is international a part of that mix? And then how do you feel about the real estate availability as you continue to expand your, your footprint?
Yeah, I'll start by saying definitely not international. That's a separate strategy, but,
Yeah, absolutely. So, we're gonna update guidance in our March earnings call of exactly what the store count will be for twenty twenty-five. But what we do see is it'll be accelerated growth through the out years. But in regards to accessible opportunities in the United States, we are very confident that there are great locations for Ulta Beauty to continue to grow, whether it's in a small market format, size, or a traditional location. It's great because we've got really three prototypes that we're leaning towards, the 5,000 sq ft, 7,500 sq ft and a 10,000 sq ft prototype. So the flexibility to have that in our portfolio, we're gonna go where our market data says that we should be, and that's how we're gonna continue to lean in and grow.
It's not gonna be just a focus on one of those categories. It's gonna be where the guest wants an Ulta Beauty.
Thanks. Okay, great. Kylie just gave me the wrap it up sign. So thank you very much for your time and interest today. As we've said today, we are very confident in the future of Ulta Beauty. The strategies we laid out and the team we have will enable us to drive future growth and shareholder value for the long term. So really appreciate you being here with us today. For those of you joining online, thank you for taking the time. I wanna close by thanking all fifty-five thousand Ulta Beauty associates across the country, in our stores, in our distribution centers, and in our corporate team.
We are on a mission together, guided by our values and our shared belief that we, at Ulta Beauty, play an important role in our guests' lives, and I hope you feel that emotion and that power and the connection of this team today. I also wanna take a moment to thank two special people that you know, Kylie and Mary Kate, our investor relations team, who, as you know, of course, played a huge role in getting us organized for today. And I think you probably have their phone numbers, so you may be talking to them at some point anyway. But so let me just wrap up.
Thank you very much for joining us today, and we look forward to ongoing engagement as we deliver these strategies to the market and continue to be the undisputed leader in beauty. Thank you very much.