At JP Morgan's new global headquarters, it is our distinct pleasure to welcome the Ulta management team, including CEO Kecia Steelman, and recently joined CFO, Chris DelOrefice. Like other fireside situations, I will have a list of questions that I'm going to go through, and then towards the end, we will open it up for investor Q&A. For those of you in the room, please use the microphone if you decide to ask a question so everyone in the room can hear it. Kecia, you're 16 months into your leadership here at Ulta. Top-line execution has turned strongly since you took over. I think last year at this time, almost to the day, was the start of the turn, where the business really started to inflect. Over that past year, share performance has improved. You acquired Space NK in the U.K. You launched Rare Beauty.
You launched Ulta Beauty on TikTok Shop. You launched the marketplace. Just a few things in that 16-month timeframe. It's certainly been busy. What's most impressive is that the broader industry's growth was pretty similar in 2024 and 2025, so it was really a share inflection story, which is all wonderful. I guess the big picture, very open-ended question is what do you think has been most instrumental in changing the momentum in the business? Do you think the prior leadership maybe, which the senior leadership maybe didn't focus on the details, didn't focus on conversion, didn't focus on the stores and driving the culture? I know you're a store person and v ery b ig on culture. Open-ended. What's the top things that come to your mind in terms of what changed the momentum in the business?
Well, first off, thank you, Chris, for having both Chris and I here today at JP Morgan. We're excited for our conversation. What I would say is, it's not just one thing, it's many things. The first thing that I really focused on when stepping into the role as CEO was around the clarity of the strategy. I'm a big believer in that everyone in the organization, from the associate in the backroom of a store to the boardroom, needs to really clearly understand what the strategy is and what it's about, and the role that they play. The second was around getting my leadership team in place. What got us at Ulta Beauty for the first successful 35, 36 years wasn't going to be what we needed to get us to the next phase of growth.
I doubled down on my efforts to get the right talent in position, like Chris here, who's joining me on the stage today. Those two things in combination, I think, really helped us improve our execution and our focus, collectively together. Also, we really took the strategy of the Ulta Beauty Unleashed plan, which had three components, and I'm a big believer in simple language that everyone understands. From driving our core business to driving margin and creative business, to realigning our foundation for the future. There were some key unlocks within each of those that I really feel helped elevate us in 2025. Around driving our core business, it was around brand building and making sure that we had the right brands in our store. We had 100 new brands launched in 2025, really being part of the cultural marketing relevance and being top of mind.
We partnered with Cowboy Carter Tour. We were at Lollapalooza, Coachella. We were engaged in social aspects, and that was really big. Really investing in our digital channels. We added a lot of functionality to our e-com, which made that shopping much easier. Around margin accretive businesses, there were four key areas that we were really looking at. International. We started the year only as a U.S.-based company. Now we're in five countries across the world. We acquired Space NK, as you mentioned. Wellness. We were focused on marketplace, UB Media. These are ways that all collectively together, they are continuing to drive the profitability of the business. The third is around realigning our foundation for the future.
When you look at our go-to-market team, the new leaders I put in place, the way that we are going to meet with brands, the way we bring our brands to life in our stores. I saw in my seat before as CEO, COO, where there was opportunity to collectively move at much quicker speed and alignment within the organization. Time is money, and time and execution really does matter. Just those go-to-market leaders working collectively together with our brands really brought brands to life much better and much quicker in our stores. You combine all of that together, having the right team, the right plan, the right strategy in place. I feel that's what really contributed to our success in 2025.
Excellent. As you look ahead into the second full year of your leadership, where do you see the biggest opportunities to enhance that momentum, whether it's the merchandising side, store execution, customer engagement? Said another way, what strategies are you really most excited for in 2026?
Yeah, that's like asking me who are my favorite children. What I would say is-
You always have a favorite child.
Oh, no.
That's exactly right. Well, what I would say is that, for me as a leader and sitting in the CEO role, and Chris here as the CFO, our commitment to the shareholders is this last year, what we said we were going to do was drive top-line revenue growth and recover share erosion from 2024, and we did that. In 2026, we want to continue that momentum, but we want to also react and respond to more profitable sales in the end. Things like getting our SG&A back in line, more moderated CapEx investment this next year. We've been investing a lot in the business over the last few years. We need to start harvesting some of those investments, and that's what we're committed to, and that's what we've given in our guidance to our plan. We need to do both.
We need to drive top-line revenue growth, take share, and also drive increased profitability for our shareholders. That is my guiding principle for 2026. How we're going to do that is continuing to lean into the Ulta Beauty Unleashed plan. Our core business is the main focus of what Chris and I are looking at, how we continue to drive the business along with the executive team, how we improve our overall productivity in our stores. Our stores are our largest asset that we have today. How can we continue to drive increased volume, profitable volume, and improve turns out of our existing store locations? Newness and brand building, really important to us. It's really important to this entire category, so really doubling down on that.
Leveraging our investments around personalization, our digital acceleration, and personalization in communicating one-to-one with that rich 46.7 million loyalty member base that we have today is really important. Doubling down on our growth from an international perspective, we are in the top growing beauty markets right now with the acquisition of Space NK in the U.K., and we want to continue to grow Space NK. In Mexico, we've got nine stores open. We're going to continue to open more this next year. Our launch in the Middle East, we now have three stores that are open, and we've got really great aggressive plans to continue to grow there. Wellness, we're doubling down on wellness. Marketplace, we've continued to launch more brands. I'm very pleased with how the marketplace is working with our ecosystem.
We're just going to continue to lean into our UB Media and how we can continue to leverage that loyalty member base with the dollars that we're able to take in from the brands and really drive the business collectively together. In regards to realigning our growth for the future, it's around AI. How are we going to continue to leverage AI? We've seen some great successes in our guest services platforms and how we can really improve our efficiencies there. Also in supply chain, there's been some great wins. Agentic AI, we're very excited about what agentic could really do to enhance our business. Just continuing to look for ways to take costs out and be efficient within our business as a whole. Those are the strategies that we're really working on.
I'd say it's focusing on what we did in 2025 and just taking that to the next level, I feel positions us for a great, successful 2026.
Excellent. If you look over the long arc of time, Ulta over the past 40 years has turned into sort of this somewhat balanced prestige mass retailer. As you've gained access to more and more prestige brands and have been able to take the customer to even the highest luxury price points in many stores. At the same time, it's become a much more hit-driven business because of social media and TikTok, and the spikes are fast and maybe recede faster. As we think about the strategy to continue to get not only access to brands, but to get hit brands faster.
The question is, how have you partnered with your chief merchant to engage with the big brands, but also the developing brands, to make sure that when they think about going national in the United States and now in the U.K., that Ulta is a partner that they want to get there faster versus maybe on a bit of a delay in the past?
Yeah. One of the things that's kind of fundamentally changed is there used to be a long list of big brands that we wanted to bring into Ulta Beauty. One of the strategic fundamentals that Lauren and I have discussed is that we want to look for white space opportunities. Opportunities to bring brands in that complement our already existing assortment, not cannibalize the existing assortment that we have today. There are not that many big brands that we don't have that we're going after, to be fully transparent. There's really four ways that we're looking at how do we create newness and brand building capabilities within Ulta Beauty. Number one, of course, is the big brands. There's a few out there that we still want to get. The second is these smaller, more independent brands.
Think brands like CÉCRED, which we launched, and it was the largest specialty haircare launch in the company's history. How do we find more CÉCREDs out there? Polite Society is another one, where we've launched Polite Society. Those kind of brands we're continuing to look for. The third are more around emerging brands. Think like K-beauty brands. K-beauty, to me, is an emerging brand that we're continuing to go after. Lauren and I just recently were in Korea on the ground together, just meeting with the manufacturers, with the brands that are there. That is an exciting growth opportunity, I think, for us at Ulta Beauty. The fourth one is really around the strategics. We met with a group of strategics more recently in New York. We're going to have a similar meeting in California.
Where in the past, Ulta Beauty might have been looked at as the place that you would scale, we want to be looked at as the place where you build, you scale, you launch, and you globalize within Ulta Beauty. I really do believe that we no longer want to be viewed as the secondary place that you go. You need to be starting to think about us as the primary, because with the different store prototypes, the different guests that we can bring into your brand, and with the caliber of talent that we've been adding into our merchandising team, we're positioned better now than we ever have been before. We've been viewed as a very good partner with legacy brands, the brands that have had a shift in their momentum.
We've proven that we will stay with you, and we'll get in the kitchen with you because we know this consumer better than anybody else out there. I think having that credibility within the marketplace, we want to be a place that you look to go to launch and build and grow with us for the long term. We want to be in a win-win relationship with our brands, whether it's an incubator brand that's just starting or if it's a legacy brand that wants to continue to grow.
Do you think those conversations? Was it not purposeful before? You would think that this would have been a strategy to have that conversation with the merchants, whether it's a strategic brand that you're going to try to grow or a brand that's trying to go national. Is there a change in terms of how you approach these brands? What was different versus how it existed prior?
I think it's been a shift in where the priority and the time was spent, because there were enough big brands that we felt like we still needed to get into our ecosystem, that was maybe where the top priority was at that time. That has now shifted because there are just not that many big brands that I necessarily feel that we are missing, that we need to be bringing into our assortment that doesn't cannibalize our already existing assortment. I think that's a little bit of shift of the environment of where we are today from where we were in the past.
I also think it's just the maturity and the level of sophistication that we've got within our company right now today, where we're primed, positioned, and ready to go to be able to offer this to our brands that maybe we weren't as strong with in the past. We're ready to go, and I look forward to being able to bring some of these brands to life in Ulta Beauty.
Awesome. I wanted to go back to Space NK. 83 units, prestige luxury beauty retailer based in the U.K. What have you learned since the acquisition in July in terms of the growth potential of the business and what are the sort of synergies with the existing business? Do you see this as an opportunity to scale in Europe?
Well, I would start with saying that I'm very pleased with the acquisition of Space NK. We've had it now for the holiday season, and I'm really pleased that we made this decision to bring them into the Ulta Beauty family. Two reasons. Number one, the U.K. is a fast and growing market. It made a lot of sense for us to be able to acquire versus trying to grow organically or have some kind of a partnership. This was a great opportunity for us. The second is that the culture and the team is fantastic, and we were able to retain that team and bring them into the Ulta Beauty family also. What I would say that I've seen is it's one of those situations that it's a one plus one equals three. We have scale. We have the buying power. We have the operational efficiencies.
We understand what it's like to grow and to scale and to operationalize. We bring that to Space NK. What they do really, really well is the storytelling inside their stores. They are fantastic at brand curation, especially in the prestige to luxury side of the business. They have brands that we currently don't have within our assortment. We can learn a lot about those brands and would those brands work in Ulta Beauty. I just feel that there's this ability for them to be really successful in high- street locations that are smaller footprints, and we had not quite cracked that code here in the United States. We're learning from them. We're learning just as much from them as they are us, which I think is fantastic.
One of the things, the fundamental focuses that I shared with my leadership team is I've seen a lot of companies acquire other companies, and then they try to force their fundamentals and the ways of doing business that works for the larger company onto the smaller company. I want to really protect what makes Space NK really unique, because they are very unique, and they're very special, and I want to keep them authentically who they are. I think we can learn some of those aspects and bring them into the larger ecosystem of Ulta Beauty. We've committed to that. It's been a great journey. I'm very pleased with the asset. I do think that it can continue to grow.
There's still plenty of growth opportunity in the U.K., and I would say that that's what our primary focus is right now, is continuing to grow them in the U.K.
Do you find any appeal in having high street Space NK stores in the United States?
Yeah, I think that there's an opportunity where because we're different enough, but we complement each other enough, that there potentially could be a world in the future where they both coexist, but that's not what my top priority is right now today.
Understood. Then, it's always helpful, particularly for me, to talk about trends within the business. Obviously, there's been a lot of questions on prestige makeup, durability of growth in fragrance, K-beauty, skincare. Can you jump into what's going on from a trend perspective and any sort of variance that you're seeing versus maybe what happened six, 12 months ago?
Well, you hit on a couple of them in your question here. What I would say is that, I'll start with K-beauty. K-beauty has been an emerging brand. We're the largest U.S. brick-and-mortar K-beauty retailer, with some of the key brands that we and the merchants have done a fantastic job. They've brought into the United States. Brands like Anua and Medicube just have been home runs. So it's been great to see these brands come to life. We're really focused on quality of brands because I think that that's also some noise that's out there, and especially in this space, as it can be viewed as a very fashion in and out. Our merchants do a fantastic job of making sure that these are really great products for the value and that they have longevity with them.
Because if you're investing in bringing a brand into a store, it can get really expensive if you just continue to turn it. K-beauty is a trend that I see staying with us. GLP-1s, I've been talking a lot about this recently. GLP-1s both from skin elasticity and rapid weight loss can impact how your skin looks, which then impacts how your makeup looks. Moisture back into skin is a trend that I see really continuing to grow, along with hair. Hair loss is also something that is part of the GLP-1 phenomenon. Us leaning into hair and skin with GLP-1, I think is here to stay. Also, heavier makeup use, glam or glam makeup. It was kind of this clean girl aesthetic look. It's getting back to a little bit more heavier makeup look.
Which is good.
Which is really good for us, yeah, especially heavier eye, heavier lip, a little bit more back into the contouring again.
Wow.
We like what we're seeing with that. Those are just some of the trends that we're seeing that we're going to continue to lean into. Something that Lauren and I have talked a lot about is with us having such a great visibility with the 46.7 million loyalty members in our database, we also have the ability to set the trends. Instead of waiting for the trend to happen, Ulta Beauty working a little bit more proactively with some of our brands on, we see how things are kind of going, but we should also have a responsibility to create some of these trends that are out there in the environment. I think you're going to see us starting to play a little bit more in that realm here in the future.
Contouring, that's 2015, 2016.
Absolutely.
Again.
Actually, some of the looks are actually more 1980s, 1990s, which goes back to my era of heavier makeup usage, so it's great to see.
Any concerns on fragrance? It's a constant question.
Oh, yeah. I'm glad you asked about fragrance. Fragrance has been an ongoing trend. What we're seeing in fragrance that is very unique is that it's a younger consumer that's male, that's really coming into this category, that's a new member that's coming into our ecosystem, which is great. It's like in the past, you used to buy your fragrance, and then it would be your signature scent. Now we're seeing multiple scents worn throughout the day. Fragrance layering is continuing to grow. We've publicly gone out there and said that we want to be the number one fragrance destination in the U.S., and we've got a good plan in place to be able to achieve that here in the near future.
One of the questions that we're asking in all these meetings is obviously about the consumer. There's a lot of dynamics. Obviously, great news in the market today with oil prices pulling back. It is an uncertain backdrop. In the past, we've seen when gas prices surge, granted, we're at $4 and change, we're not $5 like we saw in 2022, where you saw a more distinct impact to the consumer, and the consumers got tax stimulus, which should be helping them right now. An open-ended question of what are you seeing from the consumer? Is the uncertainty of the war and energy prices causing any concern or having an impact on your business? To what extent do you think stimulus is helpful?
Well, we talk often that this category is a self-care category, and that the consumer does tend to prioritize taking care of themself front and center, whether you're talking about beauty or wellness. I feel that we're well-positioned, especially with having everything from mass to luxury and everything in between with all categories within our portfolio. I do feel that we can weather any storm that could potentially come our way. It's totally unpredictable. From one day to the next, I've really encouraged my team to focus on controlling what we can control, make sure that we're giving great guest experiences. I did share on our earnings call that, in February, we hadn't really seen the consumer impacts yet. We're not prepared to share any inter-company or inter-quarter data yet. We'll be sharing in June, like what we've seen in the first quarter.
This is a great category to be in, again, because it's prioritized. What we've heard from our community is, because we have a very rich dialogue with our consumer base, is that what they say is that they're going to continue to prioritize their regimens. They're not going to trade down in their regimens because it's something that's important to them. Now, what they say they're going to do and what they do aren't always the same, but all of the insights that we have is that we should be able to continue to weather whatever's going to come our way. This is going to be a category that they're going to continue to prioritize, and we'll just continue to stay close to it.
I think Walmart has said in the past that consumer, when you ask them, they're like, "Oh, we're worried, and we're not going to spend." The reality is give them a little stimulus, and they're happy to continue to spend.
Well, I feel like I've been saying it's an unpredictable environment since I've stepped into the role as CEO, and actually even when I was in the COO role, it's been unpredictable for many years for many different reasons, whether you're talking tariffs or wars. I think that's part of being in retail. After being in retail for over 30 years, good retailers figure out how to navigate any type of storm. I feel like we're well-positioned to be able to do that here at Ulta Beauty.
Excellent. I guess the one question that I do have as a follow-up there is, you did assume some moderation in the category backdrop. I think from our side, Kylie and I, and Mary Kate talk about this all the time, it looked like the category grew pretty close to 5% last year. You are assuming a slower growth rate. I guess, to what extent was that just taking a prudent outlook?
The category growth for 2026 has been communicated. It's between 2%-4%. Our guidance is at 2.5%-3% or 3.5%. The mid-range of that is 3%. What I've said is that we want to continue to grow our top-line revenue, and we want to continue to take share. That's what my goal and objective is to be a share gainer, not a share donator, and that we've got plans in place I feel that will enable us to continue to do that in 2026.
Fantastic. Chris, I don't want to leave you alone too long over there.
Of course.
You joined Ulta in December. I would love to hear your high-level thoughts of how you think about financial stewardship, whether it's a greater focus on disciplines around return on invested capital or perhaps creating a funding mechanism, where the future investments, because this is a category that you continue to need to invest in.
Yeah
become self-funded.
Yeah. No, I appreciate the question. Thanks for having me. One, it's super exciting to be part of Ulta. Obviously, I think it's strategic positioning, the category it plays in. The strength of the financial core is there, and just the people-focused culture is amazing and working with Kecia. Super exciting. When I think coming in new, I would point to maybe two things that go hand in hand that I'm focused on as you think of my time. One, in Kecia's setup, obviously, we're focused on core beauty, right? There's all these other opportunities that are complementary and are very early innings, right? We've kind of set the table and set the foundation of new growth vectors that we can unlock that can contribute to sustained growth profile and momentum in the future.
Think of that as kind of, we've got this great foundation and an opportunity pipeline. I want to make sure that we unlock that in a thoughtful way and helping the team stay focused on the core, but at the same time unlock the new growth. I think where I'm spending a lot of my time is, okay, how do you do that? The financial discipline of a strong growth profile, but a more maturing growth profile, right? A lot of the history here has been sort of stacking as you expand. Now you have to be much more disciplined in that approach. There's principles that I bring to the team of, one, zero-based budgeting, and really, you have to sort of rebid for the investments that you had last year. It starts with that.
The second thing is everyone understanding how do we get more leverage out of what's already been put in place from an investment profile? What are those natural leverage points in your portfolio? Third, a productivity agenda. It's almost like a balance sheet, right? I've got the invest side, I've got the grow side of the equation, and pulling that together to your point in a truly integrated planning process that optimizes profit growth at the end of the day. I've been super focused on that. I know 2025 was a year of investing in some key capabilities. To your point, we won in the marketplace, driving market share, had nice top-line growth. We did what we said.
When you look at our guidance in 2026, it sets up very nicely against our long-term value creation algorithm and being able to compound earnings at double-digit growth. Spending a lot of my time bringing that to life within the guide that you see, that I think sets up nicely for Ulta.
It was interesting to look back. In 2012, you had $2 billion of sales, and SG&A was 22.0% of sales. In 2025, you had $12 billion of sales, and it was 26.6%. That's sort of not the way us that live in the Excel world think about how businesses should scale. I remember, when Mary Dillon joined, there was a lot of investment that the company had, the CRM and loyalty and supply chain and technology and so forth. How much of that was just catch-up in investment? Then as you sit here today and think about potential for big projects in the future, is there any further catch-up that you see out there?
Yeah, look, we've had multiple years of investment to your point. I think heading up into 2024, there was a few years of core foundational investments, in particular, tech enablement, whether it be our ERP systems, point-of-sale systems, digital data. That set a great foundation that sets us up in the future. Following that, since we've been so focused on the foundation, it was, okay, go to market. What are we doing from digital capabilities, setting up some of these new growth vectors, such as marketplace, wellness, a lot cross omnichannel to make sure that we have a very competitive omnichannel experience, which I think is actually an advantage of Ulta. We just cycled through that in 2025. The way you should think of investment going forward is more normalized investment. We're going to continue to invest in this business.
I'm all about consistency and making choices within a given year. You saw in our guide we're going to invest SG&A while at moderated levels in terms of growth from last year. We're basically setting up in line with sales growth to slightly below, so there's some leverage in plan. You're getting nice profitable growth. I think the key is to make choices. An organization can only digest so much, and you want to make sure you're maximizing that potential. I think one of the other things that I bring is making sure we're not just investing, activating something in market, but are we holding ourselves accountable to get utility out of it over the timeframe? Then you have your next phase of investment of new things that you want to do.
That consistency of investing, driving profitable growth, either in line to just ahead of top line is the rhythm that you can expect and is what's set up in our guidance.
Yeah. What we've committed to is getting SG&A back in line with revenue growth. When we do this, that'll be the first time since 2017 that we've been able to do that. We are committed to building that muscle here within the organization, because, again, when you've got heavy growth rates, that's what you're focused on. We've got to bring that financial discipline within Ulta Beauty, and we're committed to doing that.
Trying to think about the other side of that, it is such a dynamic category. I was talking in the last session, a different industry where it seems like the structural expense rate is just higher because there's more advertising in this category. There's more change from a trend perspective. There's more changes that need to happen in the store. There's more conversion needs. You need help in that store. How do you think about what then is the right leverage point? Like most retailers who don't grow, and granted you do have growth, leverage, start leveraging at 2%-ish kind of comp. You have a little bit of growth, and it is a more dynamic category. Is there a way to think about the leverage point being sort of 3%-4%?
Yeah. That's a great question. Again, if you look at the guide that we gave in 2026, right, the midpoint of our comp growth is 3%. If you look at our plan, there is leverage in our plan, and it's even actually a little bit more in the core, right? Keep in mind, we're still digesting Space NK, right? When you look at, again, growing SG&A in line with sales to slightly below, it translates to margin flat to up 20 basis points. If you look at that organically, there's even some leverage at the bottom end of that, right? The flat goes up. We are getting leverage at around that 3%.
I think importantly, just one thing to think of, and I know there's been a lot of focus on SG&A, and how much SG&A's been growing, but I think that's because you haven't seen necessarily the profitable growth come with it. SG&A growth in and of itself is not bad, as long as it's not at the expense of margin. When you think of the guide we set up for this year, we all win if we can maximize profit growth at the end of the day, right? Once we start a year, if I see upside opportunity, if I see an opportunity to reinvest back in the business, drive top-line growth that fuels future momentum as well, increases operating profit, not at the expense of margin, and I'm still within my margin guide. That's a win for everyone, and that's how we'll approach the year.
I think we set up the year nicely with some leverage, and then we'll see what we can do to continue to maximize operating profit as the principle we'll drive in a disciplined way.
A bit more tactical on the SG&A front because there's just a lot of noise in there with Space NK and some incentive and investment timing as you look at what happened over the course of 2025 and how it influences 2026. In our model, we have SG&A dollars up 16% in the first quarter, going down to high single digits in the second quarter, and then 2%-ish in the back half, in light of investments in NK and incentives. Is that the right? I know you didn't comment specifically. You talked about double-digit in the first half of the year, but the numbers are a bit all over the place in the consensus.
Yeah.
Is that the right path?
Yeah, I appreciate the question. I think directionally, let me give some color here. To your point on earnings, we said double-digit first half. It implies low double-digit in the second half. I think it's important for everyone to understand that there's no heroics needed to drive and get to that leverage. This is very much natural based on certain things in a natural rhythm that happens through the year. In the first half, you do have absorbing Space NK. You also have the full annualization of the investments that largely started more in the second half of 2025. You get that annualization impact in the front half. Plus Q1 in and of itself actually has the lowest investment comp going back to 2025. You actually get a double impact in Q1.
That will translate if I think of Q1, you're going to be in the mid-teens level, which is basically exactly what you said. From there, it'll step down again, it'll still be about double digits, in the first half, the back half, low single digits, and you will see investment in every single quarter, including Q4. We are investing behind the business. I'd also say as you think of investment, as we get to leverage, my goal is also to optimize the productivity of the investment, right? I want to get more utility out of every dollar because we do need to be competitive in the category. Hopefully that helps give you the color you need as you think of how this plays out throughout the year.
Understood. To reiterate, we've said sort of 16, mid-teens, 15%-16% is right in the first quarter, stays still double-digit, but steps down in 2Q and that low single-digit-
The first half is actually still double digits. The second quarter would step down to call it high single digits.
Nice glance here at models, right? With that, I have a few more questions I definitely want to cover, but I wanted to open it up to the floor for questions. If you have a question, please grab the microphone, raise your hand, and ask your question. Okay. I'm doing such a great job that no one wants to.
Yes
Ask any questions. Thank you.
Maybe just staying on the topic of SG&A, I guess the question would be, is it the right time to bring down SG&A growth given competition in the space, given Amazon obviously growing nicely in beauty, given one of our partners, Target, is now probably become a competitor, got Walmart also talking about beauty? Is this the right time to actually step down SG&A growth?
Yeah, it's a good question. Again, we're investing in the business. This is not starving the business by any chance. Some of these investments that we made pre- 2025, and certainly in 2025 all have carryover effect, and we said we would harvest those. A lot of those were in early innings. They were launched in the back half of the year. You certainly get carryover benefit from them. Again, there is an underlying productivity agenda, and we're just being much more disciplined around what our leverage points are versus stacking investments. I think our plan has much higher ROI, as you think of how we're going to market with those investments. We feel we're nicely positioned when you look at how we're competing. We're prioritizing key areas to make sure that we're capitalizing on where the guest is, right, agentic commerce.
You saw us launch in TikTok. We continue to drive merchandise transformation and focus. Kecia talked about our newness pipeline. We're hitting the key areas to enable growth. We do need to continue to drive healthy growth to have this all pull through, right, in terms of a flywheel. We feel good about the plans that we have. Actually, I would argue that focus
Makes you sharper and allows you to execute well.
Yeah, we've been in a heavy investment cycle for many years, and letting things settle and simmer actually could be very good for our organization, too, to really maximize those investments that we've made to get the real true value out of it. Focusing on the basic fundamentals of running the business, also, you get a benefit from that, too. I think the organization is primed that this is the right time. We've made the right investments. Part of it was we were so focused on foundational investments that we had a lot of catch up to do in 2025 still, too, because we were so focused on foundational that we fell a little bit behind in go-to-market. We fixed that. We took share. We drove the business top-line revenue.
Now is the time to continue to, as Chris mentioned, harvest those investments and get back to some basic fundamentals in 2026.
Thanks for your time. I wanted to ask you about the strategy on TikTok. I think you guys had previously talked about moving away from the idea of being on TikTok, and now obviously the landscape has changed. Users are going on TikTok like never before, and so just curious how you think about the strategy of the loyalty app with your 46.7 million members and TikTok. How do you view the strategy as complementary? How do you think about opportunities to grow spend per customer and make sure that customer is loyal, and grow that e-commerce strategy that Ulta has? Thank you.
Yeah, I'm very excited about TikTok Shop. We announced that on March 17th that we were launching on TikTok Shop, and to me, this is about as much of being front and center and top of mind from a guest acquisition perspective. You want to be where the consumer is shopping and where they're engaging with the brands. I think the timing is perfect for us as the first specialty beauty retailer to join TikTok Shop, and I'm very excited by what we're already seeing. A couple of things that the way that I'm looking at this business as a whole is that it's not just about guest acquisition. It's about creating that excitement of buying in real time and having that energy and that excitement of what's happening in the moment. You think about the old QVC, HSN, where you'd watch TV, and you'd buy immediately.
It's that instant gratification that you can see brought to life in that experience. Other things that we're looking at is when things would go viral on TikTok Shop, it wasn't just hitting social media channels and e-commerce channels. We would sell out in our stores. The more that we can be engaged in a 360 perspective, and we can maybe even help create some of those viral moments, is really important. TikTok Shop, especially in beauty, when it was very first launched, was all about discounting. You saw heavy discounts. You see the ones that are doing it really well, and I call out this brand, Anua, it's a K-beauty brand, has done it very well, and we've learned a lot from them. They really have gone at it with bundles and with having a value in the bundle.
It helps your AOV, your average transaction, as being much higher without it doing as much discounting. We will be one of the first retailers that could be able to have cross-branded bundles. That's how the beauty consumer is shopping today, so that is really exciting to me. What we've heard early on, we like what we're seeing with the algorithms, first and foremost. Secondly, the creators are coming out in droves. Thousands and thousands of creators have been reaching out to us because they want to come and represent Ulta Beauty. The more you can get your brand out there in the conversation, that's a huge win for us at Ulta Beauty.
The second is that more and more brands, traditional brands even, are coming to us saying that they want to participate now in TikTok Shop because we're not coming at it from a discounting perspective. We're coming at it from a unique bundling perspective. Like I said, while it's still early innings on this, we're excited by what we see. We just think it's another tool that we can add to our ecosystem that will continue to differentiate us from others that are out there.
Oh, thanks. You got a very interesting industry, and the pricing of skincare is going up, in many cases, dramatically. I'd like to hear your feeling on that, whether it's suntan lotion. I can buy a tiny tube for $40. It used to be $3.
Mm-hmm.
There's other in skincare, some of the cosmetic companies for getting rid of your wrinkles. I see my wife's bill could be $1,000. This is unbelievable.
Well, we need to make sure your wife's in our loyalty program, number one.
Platinum.
Yes, platinum. What I would say is that what's beautiful about our business is that we do have something for everyone. We have fantastic products for skincare that are at entry-level price points also, but we do go all the way to the higher- dollar regimens within our assortment. We want to be able to offer something for everyone across all generations, too. That also is something that's very important to me, is that I want to be a place, especially in skin, a younger consumer is coming into this category more and more, and we have the right and the authority and the responsibility to have something that is good for that consumer to be able to use on their skin, and we have those products in our assortment. I love the fact that we can offer something for everyone today.
Part of the increase in the volume is obviously then due to the price points that you carry and the raising point.
It's a blend of both. It's not just one or the other.
I have a question, jumping back to margins. You achieved a 12.4% operating margin last year. You have this roughly 12% out there from the last analyst day, but you also see this transitioning of how you think about financial guidance and focused on operating profit dollar growth. The question is that right? Should we start to think about the op margin? Yes, low double- digits earnings growth, but focused on growing operating profit dollars such that we should just all delete that 12% number.
Yeah. It's a great question. I kind of shared this a little bit earlier. First of all, I think, the beauty of Ulta, being able to compound earnings growth double digits, right? There's multiple components of that. It starts with investing and competing in the top line, driving share, et cetera. We do need to have healthy investment in the business. With that said, we're going to be disciplined about profitable growth, all the mechanisms that I shared before, right? We'll start a plan year. Just take 2026 as an example. We're going to grow SG&A to invest in the business, either at sales or slightly below. That implies some leverage. There will be leverage opportunity.
As the year advances and as we deliver against our plan, the goal is to just drive operating profit as high as we can go, but not at the expense of margin, right? It requires discipline, but that may mean that we do increase SG&A, but that would go up proportionally with sales. We get higher operating profit. We don't dilute margin. It's a very disciplined approach, and I think we should try and move away from SG&A growth is bad as long as it's disciplined. I think importantly, when you think of our capital allocation, and our cash, right? We have really strong ROIC. We have strong cash flow. You heard me talk about being very focused on driving inventory optimization. You saw less leverage CapEx this year when you think of sales growth, keeping CapEx in line. Our capital priorities are unchanged.
We want to continue to invest in growth through CapEx in a competitive way. The balance we want to drop to help drive that double-digit EPS compounding. This year, our initial guide, we had $1 billion of share buybacks to drive that. We're actually in a position now when we sit here and we think of where the market is and comparing that to what we view as our intrinsic value and seeing a gap there, we're actually going to increase our share buybacks by almost 50% to about $1.5 billion this year. We see that as a nice value- creation opportunity. Again, this principle of compounding earnings growth at double digits is pretty powerful consistently, and I also think that cash power helps kind of ride some of these economic cycles as well and still return strong value to shareholders.
I honestly think, Kylie and I were talking about this, the cash flow, the cash- generative nature of Ulta is really incredible. People focus on these auto parts retailers for a decade. They bought back 5%, 6%, 7% of their shares per year. I mean, that's what's going on inside your algorithm, and so you can grow and you can invest but still return a lot of capital to shareholders.
Absolutely.
Awesome. Well, with that, I think that's a great endpoint. We really appreciate your time. Thank you for coming again this year. Chris, thanks for joining us.
Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it.
Look forward to the future.
Thank you.
Thank you.