News about Estee Lauder

Estée Lauder reported fiscal 2027 first-quarter net sales up 7% to $3.7 billion, and raised its full-year outlook. Costs grew more slowly than sales, so operating income more than doubled to $408 million, with gross margin rising to 75.7% from 73.4%. Fragrance drove the growth with a 20% rise, while makeup and hair care were nearly flat. Procurement savings, manufacturing efficiencies and pricing offset inflation, and a lower tax rate than last year's 56.9% also helped lift diluted EPS to $0.64 from $0.13. Management says growth is front-loaded, and the raised full-year range of 4% to 5.5% sits below this quarter's pace.

Estée Lauder (EL) announced a strategic partnership with Microsoft (MSFT) to strengthen its cloud and data infrastructure and support responsible AI adoption across the business. The company has expanded Microsoft Copilot to more than 14,000 office-based employees worldwide and is testing productivity agents and automating repetitive manual tasks. The collaboration will advance its Unified Data Platform, while the company is also investing in a Unified Consumer Data Platform to better understand consumer needs. At the time of writing, EL shares were down 2.5% and MSFT shares down 1.5%; year to date, MSFT is up over 8% while EL is down over 1%.

Funds took a defensive stance, loading up on Marriott, Estee Lauder, and biotech and energy stocks during Tuesday's session. The move comes as earnings reports from big tech companies loom.