L'Oréal has reported a 5.1% like-for-like growth in sales for 2024, totaling €43.48 billion, with record operating margins of 20%. All divisions, except Luxe, outpaced the market, and strong performance was noted in regions outside North Asia. Key contributors included standout innovations in hair care and skin care and robust growth in dermatological beauty (up 9.8% like-for-like).
The board of directors announced upcoming changes, including the departure of Françoise Bettencourt Meyers after 28 years. In her place, the family’s holding company, Téthys, will join the board, represented by Alexandre Benais. Jean-Victor Meyers will take over as vice-chair. The board also proposed the appointments of Isabelle Seillier and Aurélie Jean as independent directors, bringing expertise in finance and artificial intelligence.
In another development, L'Oréal Luxe has entered an exclusive beauty partnership with Paris-based fashion house Jacquemus, including a minority investment. This collaboration marks the brand’s expansion into the beauty space, promising luxury offerings under the creative vision of Simon Porte Jacquemus.
CEO Nicolas Hieronimus expressed optimism for 2025, highlighting a robust outlook for the global beauty market and L'Oréal's continued focus on innovation and growth:
We delivered solid, broad-based growth of +5.1%, once again outperforming the global beauty market. Excluding North Asia, where the Chinese ecosystem remained challenging, sales advanced in high single digits. I am particularly proud of the quality of the P&L management as the Group achieved record gross and operating margins. At 20%, the latter increased 20 basis points. On a comparable basis, excluding Aesop, our operating margin grew 40 basis points and that after a 10 basis points increase in our brand fuel.
2024 was a defining year as we made L’Oréal future fit and laid many foundations for our next conquests: we augmented our marketing and R&I capabilities with AI and tech, advanced with the harmonization of our IT, simplified our organizational structures, and strengthened our industrial and supply chain resilience. We also continued to sharpen our portfolio: we acquired the Miu Miu license and Korean brand Dr.G, and took minority stakes in Galderma and Amouage.
This will allow us to go ever faster and further in our conquest of new beauty spaces: geographic, demographic and highly promising technologies that offer innovative science-based beauty solutions to the consumer of tomorrow.
In 2025, as we take the first steps in this conquest, we remain optimistic about the outlook for the global beauty market, and confident in our ability to keep outperforming it and to achieve another year of growth in sales and profit. We expect growth to accelerate progressively, supported by our beauty stimulus plan, which will be driven by an exciting pipeline of new launches and continued strong brand support.
