ULTA
The beauty aisle is still working
Ulta Beauty came out swinging in Q2: EPS landed at $6.55, ahead of estimates, and sales rose 8.9% to $3.036 billion. That’s not just a nice beat — it also means Ulta is still outpacing the broader U.S. beauty market, with prestige doing the heavy lifting while mass stays flatter than a drugstore eyeshadow palette from 2012.
The part investors actually care about
The company’s comps rose 3.8%, helped by higher average ticket, and loyalty spend per member climbed too. Translation: shoppers are still buying, and they’re not exactly tightening the purse strings at checkout.
A few more highlights from the quarter:
- Gross margin held basically steady at 39.1%
- Operating profit rose 10.1% to $380 million
- E-commerce kept flexing, with its sixth straight quarter of double-digit growth
- Share buybacks hit $236 million in the quarter, and Ulta boosted its FY2026 repurchase plan to $1.8 billion
Why the stock still slipped
Here’s the twist: Ulta says third-quarter comps should come in lower than fourth-quarter comps, mostly because of seasonality and planned investments ahead of the holidays. So yes, the company sounds upbeat on the back half of the year — but it’s also basically telling Wall Street, “Don’t get too comfy before Halloween.”
Management raised full-year EPS guidance to $28.70-$29.00 and sales guidance to $13.223 billion-$13.285 billion. That’s a nice little confidence boost, but it’s not a blank check. The company is still navigating softer makeup trends, tougher comparisons, and a consumer who’s selective, not absent.
Big picture
Ulta is doing a lot of the right things: gaining share, keeping margins intact, and throwing serious cash at buybacks. But the market loves a clean story, and this one comes with a seasonal plot twist. Investors now get to watch whether holiday demand turns the second half into a victory lap — or just a very expensive shopping spree.