2023 universal registration document

I would like to thank our teams around the world for their creativity, entrepreneurship and passion.  Thanks to their efforts we achieved a +11% increase in sales in 2023, our strongest like-for-like growth in 20 years (excluding the post-Covid rebound in 2021), despite geopolitical tensions, inflationary pressures and a stagnating Chinese market.  We once again outperformed the extremely dynamic global beauty market (+8%) to reach more than €40 billion in annual sales for the first time, with a record operating margin of 19.8%. This remarkable performance is a clear vindication of the power of our multipolar model and operational agility. Our strategy to rebalance our regional footprint has been another key to our success: it has allowed us to seize growth opportunities wherever they arise while strengthening our global leadership position. I am particularly pleased with the strong acceleration in emerging markets, which contributed 30% of our growth, together with the resilience of our historic markets in Europe and North America.

Staying true to our dual ambition of combining financial performance with social and environmental performance, we continued to invest in targeted initiatives to deliver our L’Oréal for the Future commitments.  Our efforts have again earned recognition from external experts:  we are the only company in the world to have been awarded a triple-A rating by CDP for eight years in a row. 

In 2024, the global market promises to be driven by the “dopamine effect^(1)” of beauty, which attracts consumers looking for wellbeing and pleasure to beauty products. The infinite opportunities of this effect provide the perfect backdrop as L’Oréal celebrates 115 years in beauty.  Our company will continue to outperform the competition, drawing on our proven strengths: our scientific excellence paired with boundless creativity, our digital leadership, and our unrivalled portfolio of brands, the most powerful in the beauty industry, able to serve consumers in all their diversity. 

I look to the year ahead with the utmost confidence, determined to pursue our transformation and invent the future of beauty – a beauty that is increasingly personalised, inclusive, sustainable and augmented by technology. Thanks to our advances in artificial intelligence and the talent of our teams, we will continue to push the boundaries of creativity.