Prestige and Active Cosmetics Help Boost L’Oréal’s Business

PARIS — L’Oréal’s Luxe and Active Cosmetics divisions, plus its business in Asia and online, helped power strong second-quarter and first-half results. The numbers, released by the beauty company after the close of the Paris bourse on Thursday, generally outpaced or were in line with analysts’ expectations. The maker of Lancôme, Kiehl’s and L’Oréal Paris products posted an organic sales increase of 6.3 percent to 6.61 billion euros. On a reported basis, revenues grew 0.7 percent, negatively impacted by currency headwinds, in the three months ended June 30. Despite L’Oréal’s like-for-like revenue growth slowing slightly versus that of the first quarter, when the uptick was 6.8 percent, Andrew Wood, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. LLC, in a note described the second-quarter gain as “excellent, broadly in line with consensus (of plus 6.2 percent) and so above our expectations (of plus 5.5 percent).” Deutsche Bank had hoped for 7 percent organic growth. In the second quarter, like-for-like sales at L’Oréal’s Luxe and Active Cosmetics divisions advanced 13 and 12.9 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, gains decelerated for the Professional Products and Consumer Products divisions, which registered 1.4 and 2.3 percent revenue increases. “Luxury continued to grow nicely, in line with what we had heard from LVMH

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