Ulta Beauty (ULTA) FY2025 results: revenue $12.4 billion, up 9.7% on the year

Ulta Beauty is an international specialty beauty retailer selling cosmetics, fragrance, skin care, wellness products and hair care, and providing salon services. It was founded in Illinois in 1990, when prestige, mass and salon products were sold through separate channels, and built a specialty retail concept carrying a broad range of brands and price points alongside beauty services. Its target consumer is what the company calls a beauty enthusiast, someone passionate about the category who uses beauty for self-expression, experimentation and self-investment. The U.S. operations make it the largest specialty beauty retailer in the U.S., and it has gone abroad through the Space NK subsidiary in the U.K. and Ireland, a joint venture in Mexico and a franchise in the Middle East.

The stores

Ulta U.S. operates more than 1,500 retail stores, predominantly in convenient, high-traffic locations such as power strip centers. The typical store runs about 10,000 square feet, including about 950 square feet given to a full-service salon, and a smaller prototype of approximately 5,000 to 7,500 square feet allows entry into smaller markets or shopping centers. The company puts the long-term potential at more than 1,800 freestanding Ulta U.S. stores, and reports that the average investment to open one is approximately $2.4 million, counting capital investment net of landlord contributions, pre-opening expenses and initial inventory net of payables. In fiscal 2025, 73% of Ulta U.S. loyalty members transacted solely within stores and 19% shopped both in stores and on the digital platforms, and the company reports that omnichannel guests have historically spent over three times as much as store-only guests. Orders are filled from distribution centers, market fulfilment centers, one e-commerce-only fast fulfilment center and selected stores, with buy online pick-up in store, curbside pickup, Store 2 Door and same-day delivery in virtually all markets.

The assortment

The core range is approximately 30,000 products from approximately 600 established and emerging beauty and wellness brands, spanning cosmetics, fragrance, skincare, bath and body products, haircare, salon styling tools and wellness products, from entry-level to luxury price points. The top ten brand partners, among them L'Oréal and Estée Lauder Companies, were approximately 51% of Ulta U.S. total net sales in fiscal 2025 against approximately 54% the year before. Alongside them sit own-label and exclusive lines: the Ulta Beauty Collection private label together with long-term exclusives were approximately 4% of net sales in fiscal 2025, and approximately 11% once short-term exclusives such as Cécred and Peach & Lily are counted. All brand partners, their subcontractors and their facilities have to meet the Ulta Vendor Standards, the ethical, legal, social and workplace standards required to do business with the company.

New lines

Wellness by Ulta Beauty extends the range into nutrition and supplements, intimate care covering feminine hygiene and prenatal, postnatal and menopausal care, rest and reset products such as aromatherapy and sleep support, and essential routines such as oral care, wearables and devices. UB Marketplace, launched in fiscal 2025, is an integrated online marketplace where the brands fulfil guest orders directly and the company earns a commission on the sale; by the end of fiscal 2025 it carried more than 200 brands and 5,000 stock keeping units across beauty tools and tech, discovery, grooming, luxe, personal care, pro and wellness. UB Media, launched in 2022, sells brand partners a suite of media and advertising capabilities reaching audiences across the company's owned digital channels and others.

Abroad and people

Space NK, which the filing describes as a British beauty retailer and whose acquisition was announced on 10 July 2025, runs as a standalone subsidiary under its pre-acquisition management team; at 31 January 2026 there were 84 Space NK stores in the United Kingdom and two in Ireland. The joint venture with Grupo Axo licenses the Ulta Beauty brand name and operating model for Mexico and ran nine stores, and the franchise partnership with Alshaya Group does the same in the Middle East, with one location in Kuwait and one in the United Arab Emirates; the company earns royalties on sales from both. Management estimates there are approximately 140 million beauty enthusiasts in the country, and Ulta U.S. competes for them across all major categories and price points with prestige, mass and salon products. At 31 January 2026 the company employed approximately 65,000 associates in the U.S., 1,800 in the U.K. and Ireland and 20 in Uruguay, approximately 32% of them full-time and 68% part-time, with no collective bargaining agreements.

From Ulta Beauty's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended 31 January 2026. The filing

Written from the 10-K filed 26 March 2026: read the full 10-K.