L’Oréal Stock Takes a Hit After Q3 Results Release

PARIS – L’Oréal stock sank on the Paris bourse Wednesday after its third-quarter results underwhelmed the market.

At 11:50 a.m. CET, the stock was trading down 6.4 percent to 372.45 euros.

As reported, L’Oréal’s like-for-like sales growth for the three months ended Sept. 30 was 4.2 percent, which missed analysts’ consensus by 50 basis points.

“This is a notable miss in Q3 versus high expectations in the market,” David Hayes, a Jefferies equity analyst, said in a note Tuesday after the results came out.

There was also reaction to some of what was said in a conference Tuesday evening call led by Nicolas Hieronimus, L’Oréal chief executive officer.

“The L’Oréal CEO stated that it was ‘fingers crossed’ for 11:11 in China and a strong holiday season in the U.S. and Europe,” Tom Sykes, a Deutsche Bank analyst, said in a note Wednesday, the day after the French beauty giant released its results.

“This lacked conviction, in our opinion, and we expect the market wanted a lot more visibility for the 29x ,” continued Sykes. “Given this lack of visibility provided by management and the risk of slower China growth and fragrance destocking, we expect the stock to be under pressure.”

In the third quarter, sales at the maker of YSL, Kiehl’s and La Roche-Posay products increased 0.5 percent on a reported basis to 10.33 billion euros. That came in 1 percent below consensus of 10.44 billion euros.

Adjusted for IT transformation, L’Oréal sales rose 4.9 percent in the period.

Company results came out less than 48 hours after news broke that L’Oréal is acquiring Kering Beauty for 4 billion euros, making it the group’s largest deal to date.