Sales Surge at Ulta in Q2

Ulta Beauty’s net sales increased 19.4% to $877 million in the second quarter. Comparable sales (sales for stores open at least 14 months and e-commerce sales) increased 10.1% compared to an increase of 9.6% a year ago. Retail comparable sales increased 8.9%, including salon comparable sales growth of 10.1%. Salon sales increased 19.7% to $51.6 million and e-commerce sales grew 43.4% to $36.1 million.

“The Ulta Beauty team achieved outstanding results in the second quarter, with top line momentum delivering better than expected earnings growth,” said Mary Dillon, CEO. “Strong traffic growth drove healthy comparable sales increases across stores, salon and e-commerce, while average ticket growth also contributed. An exciting pipeline of new products, combined with increasing effectiveness of our marketing strategies, drove market share gains across all categories. In light of the excellent performance of the business in the first half of the year, we are raising our outlook for the full year and now expect to achieve earnings per share growth in the high teens.”

For the first six months, net sales increased 20.5% to $1.7 billion. Ulta opened 20 stores in Q2, and ended the quarter with 817 stores.