E.l.f. Beauty Expands Global Footprint With Sephora

E.l.f. Beauty is working toward covering all the bases when it comes to retail.

After a successful launch in Sephora Mexico, the mass beauty brand will continue its expansion with Sephora in the Middle East, while it also finds success at Dollar General.

“We’re the top three brand in Sephora Mexico, one of the best launches they’ve ever had. What they saw in Mexico was E.l.f. brought in a whole different consumer set — younger core enthusiasts — and I think they got excited about the data they saw. E.l.f. didn’t cannibalize any other brands, but just brought incremental sales in,” said Tarang Amin, chief executive officer of E.l.f. Beauty, in an interview as the company released first-quarter earnings.

The Middle East beauty scene is heating up as Ulta Beauty also prepares to launch there via a licensing agreement with Alshaya Group.

Amin also noted a wider deepening relationship with Sephora: Hailey Bieber’s Rhode, which E.l.f. acquired earlier this year in a $1 billion deal, will be rolling out at Sephora North America, while Naturium, another brand owned by E.l.f., is gearing up to enter Sephora Australia.

“It’s a really great chapter for us to expand our partnership with Sephora,” he said.

At the same time, the E.l.f. brand continues to roll out in all Dollar General stores across the U.S.

“We’ve seen incredible results. Our strategy with Dollar General was they serve the underserved consumer, with 80 percent of their stores in these rural areas. What we’ve seen so far is the people who are purchasing, 60 percent of them have never bought any cosmetics at Dollar General and then 53 percent are actually new to the E.l.f. brand. So it’s a win-win, which is often the case for us with our retailers.”

Net salesincreased 9 percent to $353.7 million in the first quarter ended June 30, primarily driven by strength in both the group’s retailer and e-commerce channels, in the U.S. and internationally. Wall Street had pencilled in $352 million.

Adjusted net income was $51.3 million. Adjusted diluted earnings per sharewere 89 cents, above analyst expectations of 84 cents.

Due to the wide range of potential outcomes related to tariffs, E.l.f. said it is not providing a full year fiscal 2026 financial outlook. But it did reveal that for the first half, it expects net sales growth above the 9 percent level reported in the first quarter.

“We did provide a little bit of color, but we’re really looking for resolution before we’re able to provide a full outlook,” Amin said.

Around 75 percent of E.l.f. Beauty products are manufactured in China, down from 100 percent.

“We have a balanced plan. On Aug. 1, we did take our prices up $1 across our portfolio. We communicated that to our community. The community response was overwhelmingly positive in terms of our transparency. We are continuing to optimize our supply chain, less to do with tariffs and more to do with a rapidly growing global business, and then we continue to diversify the business,” he said. “Our international expansion helps us a lot where it’s not subject to the level of tariffs.”