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Ulta: Beauty Category Slowdown ‘A Bit Earlier And A Bit Bigger Than We Thought’

 
• By Eileen Francis

Ulta Beauty CEO Dave Kimbell said during a 3 April presentation at the J.P. Morgan Retail Roundup conference that consumer pullback in spending is impacting beauty sooner and more dramatically than expected. The firm’s stock price tumbled 15% on the news.

• Source: Shutterstock

Ulta Beauty, Inc. is seeing a broad-based category slowdown in beauty the first two months into its fiscal year that is bigger than anticipated, impacting the company’s projected fiscal first-quarter sales comps as consumers pull back on spending and competition increases.

“We came into the year and we talked about this on our call a few weeks ago, expecting the category...

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