Ulta Beauty continued its strong sales growth momentum with a rise in net sales, comps and earnings for its second quarter.
In the second quarter ended July 29, net sales increased 20.6% to $1.28 billion from $1 billion in last year’s second quarter. Net income increased 26.9% to $114.2 million compared to $90 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2016.
Comparable sales increased 11.7%. The comparable sales increase was driven by 5.5% transaction growth and 6.2% growth in average ticket. Retail comparable sales increased 8.3%, including salon comparable sales growth of 7.7%. Salon sales increased 15.3% to $68 million from $59 million in the second quarter while e-commerce sales grew 72.3% to $96.3 million from $55.9 million in the previous period.
“The Ulta Beauty team delivered another quarter of excellent performance with strong top line growth coupled with robust margin expansion,” said Mary Dillon, CEO, Ulta Beauty. “We accelerated our market share gains while continuing to reduce promotional intensity and increase personalized offers through our industry leading loyalty program. Product category strength was broad based, with prestige cosmetics still driving the majority of our growth and with skin care, fragrance and hair care all gaining momentum. We are also benefitting from continued success of our marketing programs, rapid growth in e-commerce and solid operational execution across the enterprise.”
During the second quarter, the company opened 20 stores, and ended the second quarter with 1,010. Looking forward, Ulta said it plans to open approximately 100 new stores in its fiscal year.
