Estée Lauder FY2026: $15.05B sales, $2.51 adjusted EPS, Q4 loss
Estée Lauder's fiscal 2026 was a turnaround year on paper: net sales rose 5.0% to $15.05 billion, adjusted operating margin jumped 320 basis points to 11.2%, and free cash flow nearly doubled to $1.32 billion. The catch is that reported results still show a $116 million fourth-quarter loss and a 64.8% reported tax rate, so the honest read is the adjusted numbers, with the gap between them explained below.
1 · Expected vs. Actual
Free preview belowAdjusted diluted EPS for the year was $2.51, up 66.0% from $1.51, and the fourth quarter delivered $0.39 against a consensus estimate of $0.33. GAAP EPS was $0.50 for the year, but the fourth quarter was a loss of $0.32 per share, while the quarterly table in the same filing lists $(0.31). The bridge between $2.51 adjusted and $0.50 reported is the point: $1.83 per share of restructuring and other charges plus $0.18 of securities class action settlement costs.
Full-year net sales were $15.05 billion, up 5.0% as reported and 3.0% organic, with growth in every geographic region and a 12.0% reported increase in mainland China to $3.06 billion. Gross margin expanded 150 basis points to 75.5% and improved in every quarter of the year. Be careful with the filing's own data block: it pairs full-year revenue with a quarterly segment total of $3.64 billion, so the annual statement figures are the ones to trust.
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Figures on this page come from the company's original SEC filings. The analysis is generated automatically and checked against validation rules, but may still contain errors or omissions. Not investment advice. · Generated 2026-09-17
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