Charlotte Tilbury owner Puig boosted by fragrance and skincare sales

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

The premium beauty company behind brands from Charlotte Tilbury to Jean Paul Gaultier has unveiled growing sales this year, but said its profit dropped after dishing out cash bonuses to staff around the world.

Barcelona-based Puig also revealed that Christian Louboutin make-up ranges suffered from weaker demand in Asia.

The company, which was founded in 1914 by Antonio Puig Castello and continues to be family-owned, updated investors on its financial performance for the first half of 2024.

It generated net revenues of 2.2 billion euros (£1.7 billion) over the first six months of the year, 8.5% higher than the same period last year, on a like-for-like basis.

Fragrances and fashion was the group’s largest and most profitable division, with revenues surging by more than a 10th over the latest period and representing nearly three quarters of its total sales.

French fashion house Jean Paul Gaultier enjoyed particularly strong demand amid the launch of fragrances La Belle, Le Beau and Scandal Absolu.

Puig is also behind best-selling fragrance brands Rabanne and Carolina Herrera.

Skincare was highlighted as a fast-growing market with sales surging by nearly 12%, compared like-for-like with the prior year, driven by Charlotte Tilbury’s growing skincare business and strong sales for cosmetics brand Uriage.

Chief executive Marc Puig said the firm was “outperforming the premium beauty market” with its sales growth this year.

Puig launched on the Spanish Stock Exchanges in May with an initial public offering (IPO) that raised 2.6 billion euros (£2 billion), one of the biggest in the continent this year.

Following the IPO, Puig handed an extraordinary IPO award to all its employees, based in offices across 32 countries, amounting to 94 million euros (£71 million) in cash bonuses.

This helped drive a 27% drop in its net profit to 157 million euros (£119 million), from 214 million euros a year ago (£162 million), the firm said.

Meanwhile, the beauty giant said trading continued to be affected by a “challenging economic environment marked by geopolitical tensions”.

It cautioned over a challenging sales environment in Asia, particularly China where economic conditions impacted consumer spending.

Christian Louboutin, for which Puig has a beauty licence agreement, was impacted by its exposure to the Asian market and suffered weaker sales of its beauty products in the region.

Shares in Puig dropped by more than a 10th on Friday morning following the update.