Ulta Beauty, Inc. (ULTA) JPMorgan 10th Annual Retail Round Up Conference(Transcript)

Ulta Beauty, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTA) JPMorgan 10th Annual Retail Round Up Conference April 3, 2024 9:00 AM ET

Company Participants

David Kimbell – Chief Executive Officer
Paula Oyibo – Senior Vice President, Finance at Ulta Beauty

Conference Call Participants

Christopher Horvers – JPMorgan

Christopher Horvers

Great. Thank you, everybody, for joining us today for our 10th annual retail round up. It gets bigger and bigger every year. We’ve had one company who has been a consistent participant and supporter of the Retail Round Up. So we really appreciate and happy to welcome Ulta back — Ulta Beauty back to the Retail Round Up this year.

With me today are Dave Kimbell, the Chief Executive Officer, and then welcoming for her first time is Paula Oyibo, the new Chief Financial Officer. So welcome today, and welcome to the world of conferences. I would love to have a download on what you think afterwards.

David Kimbell

And yesterday was her birthday. So this is a great celebration of her birthday. So right.

Christopher Horvers

Happy birthday.

David Kimbell

Yes. Right.

Question-and-Answer Session

Q – Christopher Horvers

So I’m going to ask questions. And then towards the end, we will open it up for Q&A. Please wait for the microphone to come to you to make sure that those on the webcast can hear it.

So my first question is a question that we’re going to ask every company who is presenting today. So retail commentary on the consumer has been mixed, depending on who you’re talking to, some calling out weakness at the low end, shopping close to need. Others are citing greenshoots and some of the hard goods discretionary categories. How would you describe the current state of the consumer from Ulta’s vantage point? And how has that changed over the past six to 12 months?

David Kimbell

Yes. Well, thanks for having us. Congratulations on 10 years and driving this in. So when we look at the consumer environment, first, I’ll step back a little bit and reinforce that beauty has been doing very well over the last several years, really kind — historically, it’s been consistent growth category.

And coming out of the pandemic, we had really three years ’21, ’22 and ’23 of strong growth. The engagement is high. Consumers are passionate about beauty. It’s an important part of their lives. They’re connected to — they connect beauty to their overall wellness and self-care routine. The level of engagement we see in social media and in our stores and online and all the touch points we have continues to be very strong. But we also know there’s a lot going on, and you’ve touched on some of it in consumers’ lives, both economically and then in other societal factors.

Economically, there’s kind of mixed data points around the economic situation for the majority of consumers with healthy employment rates, wage growth, but also pressures that we see with raising credit card debt, student loan dynamics, other pressures that we certainly see within our guests. And then more broadly, we know what’s going on in the world around us, whether it’s some of the political challenges, global complex and then our political environment here as we go through an election year.

So it just creates this soup of activity for our consumers that they’re trying to navigate through. And consumers have been, again, largely in beauty performing well and engaging highly in the category. What we’re seeing right now as we’re two months into our fiscal year, we have seen a slowdown in the total category. The category has grown — we came into the year and we talked about this on our call a few weeks ago with — expecting the category to moderate it, as I said, several years of very strong growth. We did not anticipate that it would continue at the rate that it’s been growing. So we have planned for moderation in total category growth to kind of the mid-single-digit range.

What we’ve seen so far is a slowdown in the total category across price points and segments. That’s a bit earlier and a bit bigger than we thought, still growing, still a lot of engagement, all those things that I’ve had, but we’ve seen this growth rate come down probably faster than we anticipated. We’re watching and monitoring closely on that, staying very close to our guests.

There’s a lot of positive signs about how they’re engaging with our new brands in stores, online, connecting with our business. But the combination of — coming off of multi years of growth, in the first half of last year was also very healthy growth with some of the economic environment dynamics that we’re sorting through, as I know you are as well. And the other things that are going on in our consumers’ lives has led to a bit slower growth than we had anticipated in the category so far this year.

Christopher Horvers

Great. And so as a follow-up question to that, so really a two-parter. So I guess to what degree do you think it was something that happened with like tax refunds in February versus a more recent change?

And then the second part of the question is you’ve had some share, some categories like cosmetics and haircare have been negative. So how do you think about your ability to post positive comps in an environment where the category is still positive, but some of your categories are under pressure?

David Kimbell

Yes. To your first question, something like — we have not identified or pinpointed any one thing, like, okay, tax returns were delayed. And historically, one dynamic like that has not really impacted business with tax refunds. So we’re evaluating it closely and tracking. We’ve got a great connection. We have 43 million members. We have ongoing dialogue where we’re continually doing research. And so we’re tracking and monitoring it.

But I wouldn’t point it to like one specific factor as much as the combination of the elements that I talked about. As it relates then to our business and we think about our different categories, I’d step back and just reinforce when we look at 2023, we believe if you look at the total category — total beauty category, if you use Euromoney, there’s many sources — you use Euromonitor, we believe we’ve got about a 9% share of the total beauty category, and we held that share in 2023. And our share versus pre-pandemic is up meaningfully. And so we’ve been on a share growth for a long time. And then we’ve been able to — despite some of the competitive dynamics, been able to maintain that going in.

Now there’s dynamics within that. Some categories were stronger, but some, we struggled with. Prestige makeup was an area that — prestige makeup and haircare were two areas that we’ve talked about that we’ve been under more share pressure and the competitive environment has evolved in both those spaces. And we’re confident in our long-term ability to grow and connect our guests. There are so many positive indicators.

Our loyalty program grew 8% last year. Our — we have a metric that we look at that just kind of judges their emotional connection to us. We call it brand love, that reached an all-time high. Our retention of consumers was very strong throughout the year, their engagement in all of our channels, in-store and online, downloading of apps, release. So a lot of positive dynamics on the business.

But there’s some focused areas that we need to drive improvement on. So in makeup, to use that, we’ve seen — through most of last year, saw strength in mass and gaining share in mass makeup and then more challenged in prestige. Mass, driven by a lot of great newness, real strength in brands like NYX and E.L.F. and Morphe and Juvia’s Place and go down the list, a lot of connection there and excitement about the innovation and marketing and how those brands are coming to life.

But then we had some more competitive pressure. We have, on the prestige side, 1,000 new points of distribution in prestige area that is having some impact on our business. But we’re confident in our ability to go through. Our intent, of course, over time is to gain share in every part of our business.

And over time, we’ve been able to do that. And so we look forward — we’ll do it. And that will come in a number of ways, executed at a high level of all our touch points, delivering highly-trained, experienced by our associates in store, winning on — in our app, winning online and bringing newness.

We just — and speaking of makeup, we just announced this morning our newest latest brand launch was — is an exclusive brand launch with Serena Williams, it’s called WYN, W-Y-N. WYN. And it’s a beautiful new brand. It’s clean ingredients. It’s for active lifestyles, which Serena is pretty active.

And that’s just — that will be launching in the coming days. We just announced that today. So there’s a pipeline of activity to gain share and drive our business forward. We’re confident we can, but we know we’re dealing with some competitive environment that require us to be on our game.

Christopher Horvers

Got it. And so it’s a great segue into — as you think about the cadence over the year. The original guide was like positive low single digit in the first quarter, building to mid-single digits in the back half. So can you talk about maybe how you think about that now, but also what factors drove that assumption?

One of the questions that we get frequently is how you’re thinking about newness and the launching of newness over the year, depth, breadth and timing. Obviously, you can’t front-run an announcement that might come later, but how do you think about that newness cadence over the year in the context of the broader guidance outlook?

Paula Oyibo

Yes. So thanks, Chris. I think as you mentioned, our guidance was 4% to 5% comp for 2024 with the first half being in the low single digits and second half in the mid-single digits. And I think as we think about the cadence over the year, our guidance reflects our belief about the health of the category. So continuing to grow, but as Dave mentioned, moderating.

It also reflects our confidence in our newness pipeline as well as our evolving tentpole events. But it also takes into consideration the cadence of we had really strong 20231st half, high single-digit comps. And so that’s contemplated in the cadence of the guide for this year.

As we think about the newness, I would say we are continuing to drive and bring newness to the market. And it’s really spread throughout the year. As you said, we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves with announcing things before its time, but we feel really good about the newness pipeline across both aspects of our business, mass and prestige.

One of the things I would say about our comp cadence is if the trends that Dave mentioned with regards to the category is slowing down faster and more than we had originally anticipated, persist, we would expect our Q1 comp to be on the lower end of that first half guide that we provided of the low single digits.

Christopher Horvers

That’s very helpful. Thank you. As you think about — maybe delve into the categories a little bit. As you think about the cosmetics category and the newness and the moderation — recent moderation in the overall market, is it in one part of the market versus the other? And how do you think about, in the context of all that we’ve talked about, planning the cosmetics category in your business and maybe any commentary on prestige versus mass?

David Kimbell

Yes. Well, so the question is for the total category, have we seen changes in growth rate. Well, the total category, we don’t break out a lot of all the detail, but the prestige had been growing more recently a bit faster than mass, but we’ve seen both segments, mass and prestige, moderate meaningfully, moderate from Q4 trends. So it isn’t isolated any one part of the business, and that’s what’s contributing, and we’re seeing it again across categories, segments.

So there’s — it isn’t just one higher-priced luxury, lower price, whatever. There’s been just a kind of a general step down that’s across price points. For us, looking forward, we see — and one of the unique parts of our model, of course, we’re the only ones that offer all price points from entry level to mass, masstige, prestige, luxury. And we’re focused on driving all of them and we’ve been having success.

I mean last year, we just significantly expanded our luxury portfolio with strong partnership with Chanel already. We expanded that. We launched Dior, Natasha Denona, an expanded partnership with Lancome Absolue. So we’ve been building a luxury business, and that’s been working well. And so even in economic concerning, we see growth and potential on luxury.

At the same time, brands like E.L.F. has been a real growth driver for the total category and for us and add more accessible price points. So there’s opportunity across. We don’t see in our data, a hard sense of significant trade down like everybody fleeing higher price point products.

We have not seen that. Where there’s been strength in lower price, it’s driven more by newness, marketing, innovation, TikTok, excitement, than just the fact that it’s a lower-priced product and but as we go through this year, if the economic factors weigh heavier on our guests, we do feel confident in our position, the ability for our guests to make choices based on price point within our — within, and stay within Ulta. They don’t have to leave Ulta to have options across all different price points. And that gives us the ability to navigate different economic environments.

Christopher Horvers

Just a clarification question. So obviously, you have a tremendous amount of data that you look at on a daily basis. Have you vetted this to Circana? Is it truly an industry-wide slowdown that’s aligned to what you’re seeing in your own data?

David Kimbell

Yes. I mean that’s when we’re looking at the industry, we’re looking at external data points, and there’s multiple data points that we look at. I mean obviously, we look at our own, but understand the category, we have to look well beyond that. So yes, yes. We’re looking at a variety of external data points that are all having — indicating a similar factor that we’re talking about.

Christopher Horvers

Got it. As you think about covering a lot of hard goods categories, we just think about replacement cycle. Dyson has been such a tremendous innovator in the haircare category, having owning both the hair dryer and the Airwrap in my household, that’s $1,000 plus tax.

And so can you talk about how you think about the ability for that to actually turn positive? Like to what extent is the slowdown in that category for you just simply lapping those products? And how do you think about the ability to turn that category?

David Kimbell

Yes, that is a part of the fact that we’ve talked about pressure on our hair business. Part of it is — been lapping the tools business, of which Dyson is a key driver, our highest price point. And what we saw in the pandemic and coming out of the pandemic, a just significant level of growth, driven by innovation.

And there’s just — people were investing in a lot of new tools and gadgets and products across a lot of different categories. And in our business, that is probably the one or the — probably the biggest that is by not replenish. You don’t buy a new hair dryer every six weeks, right? There’s a longer purchase cycle on that. Most of our other products are — you’re using every day and you’re continuing to replenish.

So it has a bit of a different dynamic that we had this huge surge in consumer engagement in tools. A lot of it came to Ulta Beauty. Dyson drove big business. And when the products are $500, $600, $650 plus tax, you — that has a big impact on our comps and our growth. So we’ve been lapping that dynamic. And like I said, there’s — the replacement cycle, we have to get to that. That will take some time before we get to growth.

Now we’re seeing some improvement in that. Dyson continues to perform. We launched Shark which is a great tool brand, a little more accessible price points, that’s contributing and other tools. So there’s opportunity to get that back on, but that’s been a driver throughout 2023. We also, in that category, on the product side, shampoo, conditioner, styling side.

Also through 2023, we’re lapping the OLAPLEX launch, which was one of our biggest launches. And so that played a factor. We didn’t have as big of a growth engine in that part of the business as well. So but tools play a big role, and we’ll look for that to stabilize as we go forward over the course of the year and into next year.

Christopher Horvers

Thank you. So we talked a lot about the Sephora rollout at Kohl’s. Can you talk about how you think about the impact of that? How long-tailed is the impact? And do you think it’s mostly in the cosmetics category? So would you look at 2,500 square foot of Sephora at Kohl’s as sort of cannibalistic, like if you opened up a store in the market? So sort of store comps down for 12 to 18 months, but then grows with the overall category? Or is the impact of that shorter or longer, given 2,500 square feet versus your store and all the other dynamics?

David Kimbell

Yes. So that Sephora, Kohl’s is one — perhaps the largest, I guess, but one example of this category is getting more and more competitive. There have been thousands — more than thousand new points of distribution in prestige, that being a big driver. And we’re seeing really everybody that is either in beauty or has the opportunity to expand their beauty presence seeing as because it’s a great category. It’s historically a strong growth category.

There’s a high level of connection to it. It’s consumer — young consumers are highly engaged. So the competitive environment continues to intensify. I’ve been with this company for 10 years. I’ve seen a lot of different versions of competition, and it’s always been competitive, but there’s certainly some dynamics going on right now that are somewhat unique, and that’s one. We haven’t been in an environment where there’s been essentially 1,000 new points of a key competitor of ours that have come in, and then many of them are in close proximity to our existing store.

Historically, you alluded to this, historically, what we’ve seen, because we have a lot of experience of competitors opening up, in some cases, literally right next door to us, but within a mile, two miles, five miles, what we see is the dynamic that you talked about is, yes, there’s a settling-in period. Consumers are navigating the dynamic. But relatively quickly, we’re able to — that store that’s impacted is able to recover.

We’re confident in that — over the long term that our ability to compete, our environment, whether it’s to Sephora, Kohl’s or full line Sephora, a Walmart, a Macy’s, Nordstrom or online competitors. Our experience is unique and differentiated and allows us to continue to connect.

And I talked about some of the positives we see in our business model right now and those things, I think, are indicative of our guest value, the experience. So we’re confident in the experience we have going forward. What’s different this time for us is the scale and the pace. I mean it’s been roughly, I guess, maybe 24 months.

We’re up to 900-plus locations. So we don’t have experience at this scale, so the collective impact and how we cycle through that, I mean, again, I think — I’m confident we will over time. How long it cycles through, how much impact, the experience there is not, I mean it’s a very different environment. The products are not that different than a full line, Sephora competitors.

So we’re watching it carefully, and our focus is on doing what we do best because we know that will allow us to succeed in a long time. But we’re in the midst of it right now, so a bit TBD on how the kind of lingering impact of that and how long it takes to cycle through.

Last thing to your question about cosmetics, it’s — that is an important part because that’s a big part of our environment and their environment. But if you’ve been into one of those, it’s essentially most of what a full line Sephora offers. So it’s makeup, it’s skincare, it’s haircare, it’s fragrance, it’s a big part of what they offer, and that’s in that environment. So it’s across categories.

Christopher Horvers

And as a follow-up question to that, I guess to what extent was sort of lapping through the Sephora discrete variable and building the outlook for improving same-store sales over the year?

Paula Oyibo

Yes. What I would say is when we think about our guidance, we think of a number of factors. I would say a bigger factor with regards to our guidance is generally, yes, about the category moderation as well as the competitive environment. And our — what we’ve shared is that we believe that we, and I’m speaking from an operating margin perspective, that we will continue to invest to maintain our leadership position and remain competitive.

And so while not specifically identifiable as a factor, it’s a broader context of the consideration of the competitive environment and the category that we contemplated.

Christopher Horvers

So that is a, I think before we flip to the margin side, talk about international a little bit. You were going into Canada. And then with COVID, you backed off Canada. You have — you are now entering Mexico through a joint venture. So I guess, can you talk a little bit about sort of two prongs. One is would you still consider — is Canada still a potential target for you? And is a JV — why was the JV a right format in Mexico? And is that the right format in other international markets?

Paula Oyibo

Yes. So I’ll just — I’ll address Canada first. We started this journey of entering — expanding into Canada in 2019, very different time and very different approach. Our approach then was we were going in independently, and we were building from the ground up. We pulled back on that expansion as a part of — during the pandemic to refocus on the growth and opportunity we saw in the U.S.

I would say we still believe that Canada is expansion opportunity for us over the long term. We don’t see any viable JV or partnership models currently with — for that. And we do believe partnership is a way for us to enter the market, particularly in Mexico faster, scale faster and manage or mitigate risk.

And so that’s why beyond Mexico just being an incredibly attractive market, we, from an Ulta Beauty perspective, have high brand awareness. We’re excited about the partner. The partnership model for us helps us get there faster and mitigate risk.

Christopher Horvers

Makes sense, so dovetailing back to the margin side of the question list. You’ve — you do have — you have an Analyst Day coming later this year. You’ve reiterated the 14% to 15% and you’ve guided to the lower end of that range. I guess to play devil’s advocate, you just hit a 15% operating margin in the year that you grew your SG&A 12.5%.

And while the investment at Juvia never really ends, you are coming through over the next 18, 24 months, investment cycles slowing, some of the benefits from supply chain efficiency, UV media and so forth will start to blossom over that time frame. So I guess my question is, is, why isn’t this a 15%-plus margin business? Is it the change — more recent change in the competitive dynamics? Is there another investment agenda coming? Any thoughts there would be really helpful.

Paula Oyibo

Yes. So we have stated that we do not believe that we can generate above 15% margin on a more moderated comp of 3% to 4%. We have in prior years, as you mentioned, generated 15% margin in 2022 and at 16.1% in 2021, and that was on double-digit comps, right? And that was driven largely by the post pandemic recovery and some blockbuster newness.

You mentioned 2023. 2023 exceeded our guide of 14.6% to 14.8%. And it was primarily driven by a better-than-expected Q4 performance. And so in Q4, we exceeded our expectations, primarily driven by some SG&A spend shifting from Q4 into Q1 of this year, primarily related to our investment agenda.

So some of the project spend shifted into Q1. And then also, we knew that we were going to have a more moderated comp in Q4. And so we manage expenses more tightly in order to protect the — primarily store payroll and all that. And so we don’t actually — and so that was the dynamic in 2023. When I take a step back, we have, and Dave mentioned, the dynamic has changed. The competitive position and profile has changed.

And we believe that we will continue to — we will continue to invest and we’ll have to, in order to maintain our competitive positioning. And so that is a big contributor. And so why we do not believe that an above 15% margin on a longer-term basis is something that we’re talking to.

We have an Analyst Day, as you mentioned, in October, and we’re looking forward to sharing more about how we’re thinking about the next growth — the next phase of our growth journey and what additional types of investments and things of that sort that we will enable in order to ensure that we’re still driving growth over the long term.

Christopher Horvers

Got it. And maybe can you talk about the timing of the projects in the current agenda? There’s a lot going on, digital store, supply chain investment in UV media. What’s the arc of those different projects over — like over the next year or two?

David Kimbell

Yes. I’ll just give maybe a high level on some of them and Paula can talk about how the investment flow. But we have been on a journey for a few years now where we call kind of a transformational agenda that’s really touching many, now most of the core infrastructure elements of our business. So an ERP, SAP upgrade is something that we really needed to do, that 20-plus year old system. We needed to have a modern, current tool.

We’ve been in — we’re now, we’re in year three of a 3-year project. We see that wrapping up this year, but that’s really touched, it’s the core infrastructure of our business, wires everything together. It touches nearly every part of our business, and we’ve been making good progress throughout that.

And we’ve got important milestones still this year, particularly as it relates to our stores, so rolling it out to all of our stores. It’s a big focus for us. But that has been a big one. Supply chain is a journey that we’ve been on for a few years to, again, to update, upgrade and elevate our capabilities to be more efficient, to increase our overall capacity as our company has grown and to drive greater speed for our e-commerce guests and we’re well into that, but there’s more to come on that.

Last year, we largely completed. We’re just in the final phases of an upgrade of our digital platform, so the core infrastructure of which our app and our online e-commerce presence lives and that, again, we’re just wrapping that up, but that gives us the ability to move faster to create new experiences. We also, in that instance, we’re on a dated platform that made it harder, more expensive and took longer to drive change in our business.

We upgraded last year our POS system in all of our stores. We’re on a multi-journey around the data platform management that gives us more capabilities to personalize and have single source of truth data across our operation. And so we are making progress on many aspects.

What I’m excited about is getting through all of this. It’s not done. We’ve got more to come. All of it is intended to aid our business through efficiencies, cost savings, but more importantly, through accelerated and advanced guest initiatives.

As we move beyond that, our focus becomes leveraging these tools and other ways to drive guest experiences and investing in that as the infrastructure gets — has been strengthened. But Paula, maybe you can talk about how the investment cycle flows.

Paula Oyibo

Yes. So Chris, you mentioned — I mean, in 2023, from an SG&A perspective, we had growth year-over-year of 12.5%, largely influenced by our foundational transformation investments. What we’ve shared is that we expect that to moderate in 2024 to the high single-digit range with a low double-digit growth in the first half and then mid growth in the second half.

What we would say is this is as we are completing the existing transformational agenda investments, we will see a step down in our implementation costs associated with these IT investments, but those costs then move to operationalizing into our base, which generally, I would say, from an IT perspective, those costs — those run costs are higher than what they were previously. Some of them are cloud-based in subscription. And so those will be contributing to the ongoing growth that we see — the high single-digit growth that we see in 2024.

And then as Dave mentioned, we will continue to invest. We’ve been focused on foundational. We’re moving more towards kind of consumer driving kind of investment. And so that is also incorporated in our expectation.

Christopher Horvers

Understood. So we have about 15 minutes left. So I’d love to open it up to the audience for questions. Go ahead.

Unidentified Analyst

How you’re seeing the impacts of shrinking given that it’s been a bit of a focus for yourselves and the broader industry, how your initiatives to combat have evolved, your degree of confidence in the success of those initiatives?

Paula Oyibo

Yes. What I would say is, if I think about 2024, our expectation around a shrink is that it will be flat. So we are expecting — we’re expecting that the improvements and the investments we’ve made over the last several years are helping to at least stabilize the things that we can control. Obviously, there’s a lot that is not within our control, and so that remains to be seen. But from a 2024 perspective, we are expecting more of a stabilization.

Unidentified Analyst

In — on the call, you got a question about ASPs and what’s embedded in the guidance. I think you said expect more normalized pricing environment for ’24. Can you just sort of help us understand what that comment was and how you’re thinking about ASPs and units?

Paula Oyibo

Sure. What I would say is that over the last couple of years, as you know, the category and us, also we experienced — there’s been price increases, right? And so we got benefit in our comp as it related to the price increases. And it was a couple of years of back-to-back price increases, which affected ASP as we look to 2024. And a lot of this is influenced by what our brand partners tell us. And so as it stands now, we believe the environment has normalized and don’t expect for any incremental above and beyond the normal type of price increases that you get every year.

Unidentified Analyst

Sort of a related question, just wondering if you could speak at all how you’re thinking about promotions in light of the faster-than-expected slowdown in the category that you mentioned year-to-date. Is there any change in how you’re thinking about broad-based versus more targeted promotions going forward?

David Kimbell

Yes. Yes. We will — definitely monitoring and tracking and evolving our plans going forward. As I’ve said before, we’re not anticipating a wild swing in promotion or kind of irrational level of promotion for the year. We continue to believe that our promotional level at Ulta will be below 2019 levels as we’ve just been able to kind of continue to pivot away from some broad-based more targeted efforts and be more focused on that.

But both in the consumer environment and the competitive environment, we will make strategic choices. Our first and foremost focus is driving our experience and bringing newness, delivering great connection to our guests, investing in marketing, investing in our store labor to deliver experiences that the strategic elements of our differentiated model, delivering that, delighting our guests every day.

But we know that promotions play a role. And as the category continues to evolve, if there’s continued pressure in the category, at the same time, there’s more competitive engagement. We’re watching that carefully. We will react. We have already reacted in focused, targeted ways. And we’ve got a whole toolkit that we use to be efficient, but impactful in how we use our promotional levels.

We have 43 million members in our loyalty program and it gives us the opportunity to segment, to focus, to personalize, to work with our brands, to — they’ll fund promotions as well, to be smart in how they’re doing their promotional activity. So we’ve got tools now that we didn’t have even in 2019, let alone six, seven, eight years ago, and so we’ll leverage all of that, but we’re watching it carefully.

Paula Oyibo

We also know that value messaging, so promotions and value messaging is becoming — resonating increasingly with the consumer. And as you think about the value messaging, yes, that sometimes is tied to promotions, but not — it doesn’t always have to be, right? And so we are able to really target certain audiences and consumers to make sure they understand the value in an offer in the particular product, and so that should help as well.

Unidentified Analyst

I just had two quick questions. I guess just on the innovation pipeline, I think there’s a lot of optimism that this year would be kind of a better year than maybe what we saw last year, which followed up a year that was really strong. So you guys had I think like Sol de Janeiro and Charlotte Tilbury. I’m just curious how the incrementality of these launches are shaking out the longer you guys are doing them.

And then the second question, I think you guys changed a little bit just sort of how the store was merchandised. I’m curious what sort of the learnings around that is sort of melding the prestige and mass together?

David Kimbell

Yes. So on the innovation, we are excited about the pipeline that we have this year. And you mentioned a couple of larger ones that we’ve already launched, Sol de Janeiro in the skincare, body care space and then Charlotte Tilbury, which was the most asked for makeup brand that we didn’t carry from our guests. And so we’re excited about the performance.

We don’t get into a lot of details of any specific brands, but I will say a few months in, in both cases, pleased with the results, and we’re seeing — we consistently see and it’s true with this. When we bring brands in, particularly larger, established brands, we see incrementality and a halo across the store, and we’re pleased with what we’re seeing on that.

We also have a number of smaller brands or emerging brands. I mentioned the Serena Williams WYN brand, brands across the store. LolaVie that we launched last year in haircare, Jennifer Aniston’s brand, a brand called Half Magic, Polite Society, Rabanne, our three makeup brands that are smaller and emerging and we’re focusing on them as we move into there — into this year with them. And so we’ve got a wide portfolio of newness and we’re confident and — about the impact and pleased with what we’re seeing going forward. And then your second…

Paula Oyibo

Store layout.

David Kimbell

Store layout, right. Store layout, yes. So we did — in our latest design that we started rolling out over the last year or so, one of the changes was realigning the stores. So as you said, mass and prestige would be more connected. I mean obviously, they’ve always been in the same store, but I am makeup in most — and we’re in probably 100-ish stores that have this new design, new stores that we built, maybe it’s 125 now, and some remodels.

But in most of our stores, the old model, the previous model, prestige on the right, mass on the left. What we’ve done is refloat it to put makeup on the right but it goes from luxury down to mass. And so it’s all one flow of makeup. We brought skincare up to the front. It had been in the back of the store. We brought it up the front.

It’s such an important growth driver. Again, mass — or prestige into mass one connected experience makes it easier. And we’re really pleased. Guest response has been very positive. They — it’s not like they really struggled with our previous model, but we like this model and that will be our focus. That will be the model going forward.

Unidentified Analyst

So the whole change should be…

David Kimbell

Well, no, it’s not — we’re not going to go in and retrofit every store. It will be a sequence. Every new store that we open will have that format and then remodels as we go through. So it will take time. But it’s not something that we would go and spend. And we have other places to invest with that would be an investment that would go try to touch thousand stores and remodel all of them once for that change.

Yes. So I think I heard your whole question, which is your kind of category versus competitive pressure. So what we are seeing, and to Chris’ point, we have mobile data points that we study and watch for — since the fourth quarter, really moving into — for our first quarter, February and March. All external data points are reflecting a slowdown and it’s across price points. Some track only prestige, some track mass. We’re seeing a consistent story across the category.

And as I said, we anticipated this moderation coming into the year, and we talked about that and have built that into our guidance that it would go back to — fall back into like the mid-single-digit range, which is somewhat higher than its historical growth rate, but less than it’s been over the last three years. So that is a consistent story that we’re seeing from all the tracking that we have across the category.

But I will say that to your point, and we’ve been upfront about this and we talked about in the fourth quarter, the competitive environment is intense, and we’re feeling it particularly in a couple of areas. We lost share in prestige makeup. We’ve been challenged in hair. So that is an area — our focus has been to address some of those dynamics and drive growth.

We’ve been — we held our share across the total beauty category. We gained share in mass. We gained share in prestige skin. We gained share in fragrance. So there’s some real strength there. And then there are some that have been more pressured. We’re working on balancing that and then find the growth. But the category piece, based on our analysis, is broad-based and as I said, a bit bigger than we have anticipated.

Yes. I’m not going to get into it, because it’s — because there isn’t one perfect data point across all of beauty given the different competitors and price points and everything. I won’t get into any specifics. But I will say what we’re seeing is across categories. The tools piece is one dynamic, but that’s impacting our hair business. That’s relatively small in the total beauty, because what I’m talking about is not — while tools have been struggling, that wouldn’t be big enough to have a total beauty effect. We’re seeing — although it’s part of it, and it’s certainly impacted our hair business. The slowdown we’re seeing is broad-based across categories and price cuts.

Unidentified Analyst

Can you talk about the broader points of distribution? Can you just maybe give us an update on target with you Mr. Gazette yeah the concept of the product so is. How is that going, the [indiscernible] to your management and what you have to experience previously

David Kimbell

Yes, yes. So we are about 510 locations at the end of last year. We’re planning a partnership with Target to add more this year. We’re really pleased with our partnership and the impact it’s having with our guests. Again, as a reminder, that was designed very specifically to not replicate all that Ulta does but to give a unique, customized one-of-a-kind type experience in Target.

So we work closely with them to find a way to delight their, say, 30 million people that walk through a Target every week. And so this is a highly curated, it’s about 50, about 60 of our brands, about 1,000 square feet, and it’s designed to deliver across multiple guests, attracting new guests, and we’ve seen that as a contributor to our new member growth is by no means the major driver. Most of our new member growth is coming from our core business, but it’s been additive as we had hoped, and we’re excited about that.

It’s providing to be a nice source of what we call reactivation. So existing guests that just didn’t fall out of love with Ulta, but maybe fell out of habit or it wasn’t quite as convenient, again, by combining a convenient location, we’ve seen an increase in reactivation.

And importantly, your point about incrementality for our existing guests, we’re seeing a strong level of engagement through our loyalty programs. And while we track cannibalization, and that’s generally in line, what we’re excited about is the connection, the incremental touch point, increasing our guest overall loyalty to Ulta, and we’ve seen that in pretty much every touch point that we’ve been able to give our guests. So we’re pleased with the performance and excited to continue to expand that this year.

Christopher Horvers

So with that, time is up. And we thank you for your time.

David Kimbell

Great. Thanks, Chris. Thanks, everybody.