After several weeks of range-bound movement, shares in L'Oréal could enter into a new clear trend. The exit out of the current trading range could be the signal for a return of volatility.
Summary
● The company has strong fundamentals. More than 70% of companies have a lower mix of growth, profitability, debt and visibility.
● Overall, and from a short-term perspective, the company presents an interesting fundamental situation.
● The company's Refinitiv ESG score, based on a ranking of the company relative to its industry, comes out particularly well.
Strengths
● The group's high margin levels account for strong profits.
● The company is in a robust financial situation considering its net cash and margin position.
● Over the past year, analysts have regularly revised upwards their sales forecast for the company.
● Analysts have consistently raised their revenue expectations for the company, which provides good prospects for the current and next years in terms of revenue growth.
● For the past year, analysts covering the stock have been revising their EPS expectations upwards in a significant manner.
● For the last few months, EPS revisions have remained quite promising. Analysts now anticipate higher profitability levels than before.
● There is high visibility into the group's activities for the coming years. Outlooks on future revenues from analysts covering the equity remain similar. Such hardly dispersed estimates support highly predictable sales for the current and upcoming fiscal years.
Weaknesses
● The company's valuation in terms of earnings multiples is rather high. Indeed, the firm is getting paid 28.83 times its estimated earnings per share for the ongoing year.
● With an enterprise value anticipated at 4.6 times the sales for the current fiscal year, the company turns out to be overvalued.
● The company appears highly valued given the size of its balance sheet.
● The valuation of the company is particularly high given the cash flows generated by its activity.
L'Oréal is the world leading cosmetic group. The group offers skincare products (39.9% of sales), makeup products (19.7%), haircare products (15.4%), fragrances (12.6%), hair colouring products (8.3%) and other (4,1%). Net sales break down by family of products as follows:
- consumer cosmetics (36.9%): L'Oréal Paris, Garnier, Maybelline New York, NYX Professional Makeup, Essie Niely, Dark and Lovely, Mixa, MG and Carol's Daughter brands;
- luxury cosmetics (36.2%): Lancôme, Kiehl's, Giorgio Armani Beauty, Yves Saint Laurent Beauté, Biotherm, Helena Rubinstein, Shu Uemura, IT Cosmetics, Urban Decay, Ralph Lauren, Mugler, Viktor&Rolf, Valentino, Azzaro, Prada, Takami, A?sop, etc.;
- active cosmetics (15,6%): La Roche-Posay, Vichy, CeraVe, SkinCeuticals, Skinbetter Science, etc.;
- professional products (11,3%): L'Oréal Professionnel, Kérastase, Redken, Matrix and PureOlogy brands.
Products are marketed through mass distribution and distance selling, selective distribution, hair salons and pharmacies.
At the end of 2023, L'Oréal has 37 production sites worldwide.
Net sales are distributed geographically as follows: Europe (31.6%), North America (27%), North Asia (25.9%), Asia/Pacific/Middle East/Africa (8.4%) and Latin America (7.1%).
L'ORÉAL 
