The Estee Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE:EL) Q1 2025 Earnings Conference Call October 31, 2024 9:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Rainey Mancini - SVP of IR
Fabrizio Freda - President and CEO
Tracey Travis - EVP and CFO

Conference Call Participants

Dara Mohsenian - Morgan Stanley
Steve Powers - Deutsche Bank
Lauren Lieberman - Barclays
Bryan Spillane - Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Rupesh Parikh - Oppenheimer
Bonnie Herzog - Goldman Sachs
Olivia Tong - Raymond James

Operator

Good morning and welcome to The Estee Lauder Companies Q1 Fiscal 2025 Earnings Release and Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Please also note today's event is being recorded.

At this time, I'd like to turn the floor over to Rainey Mancini, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Ma'am, please go ahead.

Rainey Mancini

Hello. On today's call are Fabrizio Freda, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Tracey Travis, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Since many of our remarks today contain forward-looking statements, let me refer you to our press release and our reports filed with the SEC, where you'll find factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. To facilitate the discussion of our underlying business, the commentary on our financial results and expectations is before restructuring and other charges and adjustments disclosed in our press release.

Unless otherwise stated, all organic net sales growth also excludes the non-comparable impact of acquisitions, divestitures, brand closures, and the impact of foreign currency translation. You can find reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP measures in our press release and on the investor section of our website.

As a reminder, references to online sales include sales we make directly to our consumers through our Brand.com sites and through third-party platforms. It also includes estimated sales of our products through our retailers' websites. Throughout our discussion, our profit recovery and growth plan will be referred to as our PRGP. During the Q&A session, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question so we can respond to all of you within the time scheduled for this call.

And now I'll turn the call over to Fabrizio.

Fabrizio Freda

Thank you, Rainey, and hello to everyone. For the first quarter, we anticipated a challenging start to fiscal year 2025. Our results today are largely consistent with the outlook for the quarter we offered in August. Organic sales decreased 5% at the low end of the expected range, driven by double-digit declines in mainland China, global travel retail primarily owning to Asia, and Hong Kong SAR. Excluding these three areas, sales in the rest of our global business rose 1% both on a reported and organic basis, while retail sales growth accelerated sequentially from 2% to 3%.