e.l.f. Beauty, Inc. (NYSE:ELF) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

William Chappell: I mean this is kind of a recurring theme of you beat the quarter, especially on gross margin and step up the sales and marketing even further than we would have rents and repeat. And I get that now as we’re — are you continuing to reinvest back in kind of core U.S. business? Or are you looking to maybe accelerate Naturium, accelerate U.K. accelerate some of the international opportunities and reinvest more there? Or is it still — there’s just so much opportunity in the U.S. it’s going back primarily there?

Tarang Amin: So Bill, we see opportunity in both areas. We’ve obviously continued to reinvest in our core business in the U.S. We’re seeing great results, as we talked about, not only in awareness, but the brand satisfaction scores jumping all the way up to 80% satisfaction, the highest in our competitive set. We know that marketing is working. And so you’ll continue to see us awareness and our equity in the U.S. But because we have a much bigger base, add a bigger percentage in terms of marketing and digital. We’re also able to pursue some of the key growth vectors. We talked about our investment in skin care in addition to color cosmetics as well as international, part of how we drove 157% growth in international is we are investing behind awareness in the U.K. and our efforts in Canada as well.

As well as expanding in other countries. Just a couple of weeks ago, we entered Italy with [indiscernible] in Italy. Douglas told us it was probably the best launch they’ve ever seen for a brand, and we see tremendous response from consumers. So I think of money that we have within the range that we’ve talked gives us enough money to pursue both continue to focus on our core as well as expand into some of these new areas.

Operator: Our next question comes from Peter Grom with UBS.

Peter Grom: So really strong international growth in the quarter in your 2 core markets. And you called out the initial expansion into Italy. I know it took you kind of several years to kind of get in the 5%, 6% share loan that you’re currently out of those markets. But can you maybe just talk about the opportunity for Italy, specifically, and then maybe as you think about other markets and kind of the time line around that, is there anything you can share? Are you looking at additional markets in the near term. So yes, just any color on the international strategy would be helpful.

Tarang Amin: So Peter, on international, we’re seeing real strength primarily in Canada and the U.K., the first 2 countries we expanded in. And we mentioned in the call, but our Canadian business is 10x where the category growth rate is. Our U.K. business is up 7x where the category growth rate is. So the primary area of growth so far is coming from those first 2 markets that we’re really focused on, and we see a tremendous potential to be, over time, a top 3 brand in both of those markets. In addition, you’re going to see us take the same disciplined rollout strategy that we followed in the U.S. to other markets. We’re super excited about what we’re going to be able to do in Italy and the response of the brand there. you will hear about additional countries in the coming quarters.

I don’t think you’ll ever hear us talk about going into 30 countries all at once. We like this approach of both with our own website as well as following kind of a leading retailer in a particular country to be able to really penetrate that and grow from there. So I see a ton of growth potential both in Canada and the U.K., excited about Italy and you’ll hear about additional markets in the coming quarters.

Operator: Our next question comes from Susan Anderson with Canaccord Genuity.

Susan Anderson: Nice job on the quarter again. I was in — I guess just a follow-up on the international market. Can you maybe just talk about the margin structure versus where you’re at in the U.S.? I guess, is it similar to the U.S. business? And then also just on Naturium, I’m curious if you think there’s some learnings there you can take and maybe apply to e.l.f. SKIN to drive new product introduction and growth?