e.l.f. Beauty, Inc. (ELF) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Good morning, everyone. Just before we begin, I have to note for important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley research website at www.morganstanley.com, research disclosures and contact your Morgan Stanley representative with any questions. I'm Dara Mohsenian, Morgan Stanley's household products and beverage analyst. We're very pleased to welcome back e.l.f.'s Chairman and CEO, Tarang Amin; and Senior VP and CFO, Mandy Fields. Thank you both for joining us today.

Thanks for having us.

Thanks for having us.

So maybe we can start a bit short term, just with the recent outlook for the back half of the fiscal year. There's a lot of different factors from a revenue standpoint that are driving the growth you expect, fairly muted sort of implied in that low to mid-single-digit range. And the underlying retail takeaway, if you look at scanner data is running ahead of that. Obviously, there's some sort of some shipment comparison issues when you look to last year. So maybe you can just unpack things for us a little bit in the back half of the year, how we should piece all those things together? And what's sort of an underlying run rate when you think about the business leaving this year?

Yes, absolutely. So when we look at the second half, I know there's been a lot of focus on the organic business. So we outlooked 2% to 5% growth on an organic basis in the second half. And maybe let me just break down the building blocks of how we got to that number. So right now, what we're seeing in consumption in the U.S. is about a 12% consumption rate, which is fantastic, shows us that consumers continue to choose e.l.f. In fact, we picked up another 90 basis points of market share in October. So continue to do very well on that front. I think 2 other things to keep in mind are, one, on the international front, we've talked about seeing some softness in the U.K. and as we cycle the launch of Rossmann, Germany. So we're seeing our international consumption run down about a mid-single digit. And so when we look at global consumption, we're running about 8%. And so from that 8% global consumption, we talked about the pipeline impact to the second half. And so we've quantified that back half impact at about 4 points of impact to the second half. And so that really gets you somewhere around the midpoint of that 2% to 5% range as you break that down. And so that's what we really see for the second half of the year. Again, strong consumption, but that pipeline impact is pretty large at about 4 points.

Okay. That's very helpful. Now I'll get greedy, and I'll ask you about Q3 versus Q4. And just how are you thinking about the cadence and pace of organic sales growth ex-rhode in fiscal Q3 and Q4?

Yes. So on an organic basis, when we think about -- again, on that 2% to 5% that we outlooked on the November call, we would expect Q3 to be at or above that range from a quarterly perspective. And Q4, since those shipments were primarily concentrated to Q4 last year. If you take that 4-point impact and apply it just to Q4, that could be a double-digit impact to our net sales. And so you could possibly see Q4 below that 2% to 5% range. In fact, you could see Q4 dip negative in that quarter just given that pipeline impact. But again, really get back to that 2% to 5% for the second half in total, better in Q3, you're going to have more of that impact in Q4.

Okay. Great. And then just as you think about the international business, maybe some perspective on what we're seeing there from a consumption standpoint, what you're expecting going forward and also just pipeline issues there and comparisons on the international business.

So on international, as Mandy said, in Q3 quarter-to-date, we're seeing consumption down mid-single digits, and it's really due to 2 factors. One, we're seeing some softness in the U.K. The promotional environment is particularly high right now in the U.K. Not worried long term because those promotions can't sustain. But right now, we're definitely seeing the impact of that. And second, we are lapping the biggest launch we've ever had internationally with our launch in Rossmann in Germany. So those 2 factors are relating to the consumption growth. Taking a step back, if you look at the last 5 years, our CAGR internationally in terms of growth has been 55%, quite strong. Now good news is that CAGR of international growth is about 60% of that growth really came from our first 2 international markets, Canada and the U.K., where we have real presence. I'm excited as we build more presence into Germany with our upcoming launch with DM in Germany gives us, again, over 70% ACV in that market. So our ability is similar to Canada and U.K. to kind of build real presence and continue to do that. So we still see a massive opportunity internationally. I think the thing for us is to better balance the focus on our existing markets where we've gotten the majority of our growth, while we continue to open up new doors. There isn't a retailer in the world that doesn't want e.l.f. right now. And so for us, it's always about disciplined sequencing of it, but we still see a massive opportunity internationally.

Okay. And can you talk a little bit about country dynamics internationally right now? Is it more just the U.K.? Are there other markets that are showing weakness?

I think it's -- for us, it's more in the U.K. right now. That's where you're seeing greater promotional activity. Germany is just related to our Rossmann launch. Our other countries are actually doing quite well in the countries that we've entered. And we'll continue to follow that strategy of establish the brand with a leading retailer in a country and then expand from there, just like we did in the U.K. with starting with Superdrug and getting into boots in Canada, starting with Walmart, getting the Shoppers Drug Mart. In Germany, starting with Rossmann, Germany and now going into DM. We'll continue to follow that strategy while we continue to [indiscernible] in this quarter, we're also launching in Rossmann, in Poland. I just came back in the last couple of weeks from a visit to Dubai, where we just launched the e.l.f. brand with Sephora across the GCC. So we continue to see strong appetite for e.l.f. And again, for us, it's always about that disciplined sequencing of concentrating on the big markets that we have while we continue to establish new ones.

Okay. That's helpful. Maybe to finish off this topic, just as we think about fiscal '27, any issues in terms of shipments versus retail sales leaving '26. We've seen some of that in the back half of the year. Does any of that linger as we look forward to next year? Any sort of abnormal factors as we think about building our models for fiscal '27?

Well, what we pick up from a space standpoint and how that varies will vary quarter-to-quarter and year-to-year. I think the more important thing to keep focused on is the consumption. And like I said, we're continuing to see very strong consumption running about 12% quarter-to-date. And so very encouraged by that.

Okay. And Tarang, maybe you can just take a step back, right? We've talked about the business in the U.S. and internationally, the volatility. As you think about the quality of growth here, you've implemented a large price increase in the U.S. also. So give us your view on the state of the business here, both in terms of e.l.f.'s market share and also what you're seeing from a category growth perspective. Maybe we'll stick to the U.S. and U.K.

Yes. So I continue to be bullish on the category. It's an important category. We've seen -- I mean, I think just in the last 4 weeks alone, color cosmetics in the U.S. is up 7%. So pretty strong growth, I think about 2% to 3% over even a longer period of time. So it's a good category just because it's so important to consumers. And within that, e.l.f. continues to gain share. We've gained share now 27 consecutive quarters, as Mandy said, 90 basis points just in the last month alone. And we have still a massive share opportunity. Starting with color cosmetics. Our #1 retailer is Target, where we have more than 20% of their category. Nationally, we're about a 13% share. As other retailers replicate what Target has been able to do in terms of space and really focusing on e.l.f., we believe there's a massive opportunity to almost double our market share in Color Cosmetics. The opportunity in skin care is perhaps even bigger. We now are a top 10 brand with e.l.f. SKIN. We've got 3 of the fastest-growing skin care brands in e.l.f. SKIN, Naturium and rhode. So we have a massive opportunity there as well. And so we feel between our opportunity in color cosmetics, skin care and international, which I just talked, the long-term prognosis is actually quite strong in terms of the business. And you don't have to look any further than look at our history over the last 5, 6 years. You can see the consistency of that growth over time.

Okay. And in the U.S., we've heard a lot at this conference, it's a difficult consumer environment. Do you think you're seeing any impact on your business from macros? In theory, there could be some benefit given the value that you offer as a brand, but also it's a category that could be susceptible to pullbacks a little bit in spend. So what do you think you're seeing from a consumer standpoint?

Yes. So I mean I think similar to most people, we're watching the consumer very carefully, right? Obviously, a lot of uncertainty, a lot of worry on inflation, on tariffs. overall macroeconomic environment. The good news is, given our value proposition, we're well positioned even in that market because as consumers get choosy, we continue to see them choose e.l.f.. And so from that standpoint, I think whether -- and as I go through a longer track of time, whether it was the pandemic, post-pandemic period after that, e.l.f. has continued to outperform the category by a pretty wide margin, and we'd expect to continue to do that.

Okay. Maybe some perspective on the long term and market share opportunity over time. I'll pivot off your comment on Target and getting to above 20% share there. What do you see as an ultimate level you think e.l.f. can get to reasonably looking out as you think about your business from a long-term perspective in the U.S.

Yes. So from a long-term perspective, I'd say, while Target is our #1 customer, the reason why they are is they have like a 5-year head start on everyone else. And the good news is I look at each of our retailers, we see them on the same trajectory, particularly as we replicate a lot of the strategies that Target has done. And even for Target, over 20% is not their endpoint. They have declared they'd like to see e.l.f. be -- we're about $0.5 billion of retail sales for them right now. They'd like to see e.l.f. be their first $1 billion beauty brand. And to that end, they expanded our space from 13 feet to 20 feet. They continue to provide a lot of support, multiple points of disruption. And those same strategies, I think, are starting to being applied by the customers. We announced recently that Ulta Beauty is expanding space this spring on e.l.f. We're one of their top brands. Walmart has been testing what they call their highest vision sets of e.l.f., and they've tested extremely well. It's part of their overall program to elevate beauty within e.l.f. where e.l.f. anchors the entire department you see. So we see across every one of our retail massive opportunity. I can't tell you what the endpoint is in terms of share. I just know we have a lot more to get.

Right. Okay. And clearly, one of the big growth drivers for your business over the last few years has been those shelf space gains that you mentioned. Can you level set us on what we should expect going forward over the next couple of years, particularly after taking a large price increase, unit velocity has dropped off a bit, but appears to be manageable elasticity so far. You've had some big wins in the last year or two from a distribution standpoint. So how are you thinking about the shelf space opportunity looking out over the next year or two?

We still see a massive opportunity from shelf space. And the good news with us is it's been pretty consistent over the years. You've seen us pick up new shelf space, new distribution year after year, going back up to 12 years. And so I'd say the #1 driver of being able to pick up that shelf space is what's your productivity. And we remain the most productive brand any of our retailers would carry on a dollar per linear foot basis, so that naturally leads them to allocate more space to e.l.f. And then our ability to optimize that space over time through our cycles. We have a great model where we proactively change out almost 20% of the assortment each year based on the insights we're getting from our digital business, our ability to be able to continue to drive higher dollar per unit per shelf per linear foot space will continue to gain us more space, like I just mentioned. Now there are some years that you'll pick up more space, more distribution. We talked the pipeline issue that we're having in Q4, obviously, picking up 11,000 Dollar General stores in that period as well as 7 incremental feet at Target. So you might see a different cadence. But overall, we're highly confident in terms of our ability to continue to pick up space just given the strong productivity we have.

Right. And give us a bit of window or insight into your conversations with retailers? And how do you go about convincing them for more shelf space? You've obviously had a great track record over time. So the numbers speak for themselves. Is it a matter of pacing yourself? Are you -- how do those conversations play out?

The great news for us is we don't have to actually convince any of our retailers that we need more space. They can look at their own numbers. They see the productivity the brand delivers. They see the consumers that we bring into their stores. We're by far the #1 brand amongst Gen Z, Gen Alpha and millennials, and we continue to pick up more in Gen X as well as our innovation engine. They have -- we have the innovation that people are looking for. So retailers are already convinced. So it really becomes a matter of a retailer's own pacing of when are they hitting stores, when are they doing resets and how that goes. And again, we've had a pretty good track record. I think 12 years ago, when I started, I think we were less than 4 feet at Target. We're now at 20 feet at Target. We weren't hardly even in Walmart. We now have about 12 feet in Walmart, much further to go within Walmart, as I mentioned, with the highest vision set. Ulta, we weren't even in. We're now 12 feet. They're expanding more space. So I think that will naturally come given the strength of the brand. We continue to lead the category growth and have the right consumer profile, the right level of innovation. And that's the part that actually drives the space gains. So then it's really just a matter of sequencing.

Right. Okay. We've seen you expand your retail footprint in Dollar General. You recently obviously completed a significant deal in rhode, which we'll get to. But that's also led to some concern that maybe there's less base business growth opportunity. So I just wanted to give you a chance to address that, how you think about it. We've seen multiple compression. You're not unique recently in CPG. Obviously, it's happened across the group. But would just love to get your view of the long-term opportunity from here, how e.l.f.'s management team is viewing sort of the value of the stock from a share repurchase standpoint or even from a personal standpoint.

So I'll start by saying there's a fundamental disconnect between where our stock is today and the absolute fundamentals of the business and long-term potential, particularly given how much white space we have in color cosmetics, skin care and internationally. I'd also tell you, I don't think the market is properly valuing the core areas of competitive advantage we have. The value proposition, our power of innovation and marketing engine all continue to work. So I'd say long term -- and I've been in the chair for more than 12 years, I've seen stock go from $17 up to $30, down to $8 up to $30 again, down to $8, up to $200 and some. And so there has been volatility, but those who actually can take a longer-term view and see what we've actually been able to deliver consistently over time as well as how much more white space we have. And then you add on top of that, the strength of our brand portfolio. e.l.f. Color Cosmetics, we've talked a lot about. e.l.f. SKIN is one of the fast-growing skin care brands. Naturium is one of the fastest-growing skin care brands, clinically effective biocompatible, ton of opportunity, white space lies and rhode has been just absolutely phenomenal. So I'm actually more confident than I've ever been in terms of the long-term potential of the business, mainly because of the strength of that core portfolio and how much white space we have.

Great. And Mandy, maybe how do you think about putting dollars to work from a repurchase perspective?

Yes. So we just recently repurchased $50 million of stock after we saw the pullback post earnings. And we will do that as a signal to show that we believe, as Tarang said, we believe there's a disconnect out there based on what we've delivered and what we expect to deliver in the future and where the market is valuing us at this point. And so we were able to do that, and we will do that from time to time when we see those disconnects.

Okay. Great. Innovation has obviously been a key driver of the business historically. Can you talk about your innovation plans in the remainder of this year? And as you look out to next year, you did bring some fall innovation forward earlier in the year and into the spring. So it would be helpful just to hear what's coming up in your pipeline. Do you have holy grails coming up? How excited are you about that forward pipeline relative to recent history?

Yes. Our innovation is one of the key areas of strength for the company. If you take a look at our business, we have the #1 or #2 position in 20 segments of the color cosmetics market, makes up 80% of our sales. If you look at how we got to #1 or #2 in those segments, it's by launching these holy grail innovations, taking inspiration from prestige or our community, putting our e.l.f. Twist on and bringing those incredible value. And so that strategy very much stays intact. We feel really good about our spring innovation coming up. In fact, you'll be able to see a lot of it in the next few weeks as we start putting it online and some of the retailers start putting up their newness end caps as we take a look. And I'd say 2 things with our innovation coming up that I feel particularly good about. One, we have quite a few of these holy grails, these products that consumers naturally have pent-up demand with having an incredible value, particularly in this environment, we think, is a winning strategy. And then also making important value statements with some of our innovation. Again, in this environment, we think that's going to be really important. So I'm feeling really great about our innovation. And our innovation has been consistently strong over the years. I think in spring of '25, it was the second highest class of innovation we had. Of course, it couldn't lap spring of '24, which was our viral lip oils and a number of things we had there. But if I look even at fall of '25, it's much higher than fall of '24. So we feel good about the momentum on innovation and really looking forward to the spring innovation coming up.

Can you discuss what you think is unique about your innovation process? You've had a lot more success than other companies in the space, and there's certainly been some efforts to copy your success. So help us understand why you've been able to stay ahead of the pack from an innovation standpoint.

Yes. I mean, look, the long consumer career back when I was at P&G and Clorox, you have very like insight-driven and this is what you think the trend is going to be and here's what we're going to develop and you launch big innovation and you find out less than 50% success rate on most innovation. Our model is very different. We take insights from our community. Our team reflects the community we serve. We're very much in tune to our community. And our community will come to us and tell us. I mean my CMO sometimes [indiscernible] me by putting me on TikTok live and the community is not -- and she'll basically say, hey, you got the big boss, tell him what you want. Community is not shy. There was an example last year, they said, hey, there's this prestige brand. They have these bronzing drops. We can't afford them. That's $38. Help us out. And I look at the chat and say, all right, you want bronzing drops. And they're like, no, no, [indiscernible], we want them now. And I'll leave that call traumatized, call my head of R&D. We have a 3-year pipeline on our innovation. And I say, please tell me if we have bronzing drops in our pipeline. And she'd say, yes, we do. I'm like, when are they coming up? It's like 18 months. I'm like, oh, no, no, I can't be yelled up by our community again. We were able to launch them 6 months later. So I think the uniqueness of our innovation model is a few things. One is taking those insights directly from our community in terms of what do they want. You already know there's pent-up demand because you're getting those signals. Two, our ability to put a unique e.l.f. twist on where we don't just replicate the product. We always try to make it better. In fact, our quality scores have gone up every single year for the last 10 years. It's prestige quality at these incredible prices. And then our third thing is, I think, the breadth of our innovation across color cosmetics, each of the segments we're strong in, where we have the #1 position in, but also conquest categories. We're #1 in face with 22% share, #2 in the lip category now going from nowhere to #2. Eye, we're #9. We still have a long way to go there. And so our ability to both take the strengths that we have from our community as well as conquest new categories as well as skin care, I think, is what really separates us and being able to do that consistently season after season and throughout the year and applying that model to our other brands as well.

Great. Maybe we can turn to rhode. I know it's a subject you are really excited about. Just starting with the big picture, many celebrity-led brands have struggled over time with staying power. So why is this different?

Yes. No, it's completely different. In fact, we stayed away from a lot of celebrity brands because of that. What I would tell you is Hailey Bieber is more than a celebrity. She's one of the most thoughtful founders I've ever met, incredible instincts, a beautiful aesthetic and quite disciplined in terms of how they've built that brand. I mean we've seen very -- I've never seen a brand that went from 0 to $212 million of net sales, DTC only with just 10 products. And as a testament to our belief in rhode as well as Sephora's, the Sephora North American launch of rhode was 2.5x bigger than they've ever seen in any launch in their history. The U.K., we had even a higher multiple in terms of any launch they saw in their history. And so the beauty of rhode is just how thoughtfully engineered that brand has been and how curated it is. Hailey's vision of I want one of everything really good, the curated product assortment, the aesthetics. But probably most importantly, and what really appealed to us is a very similar philosophy in terms of how you engage the community. I mean the consumer [indiscernible] for rhode is unlike anything I've seen. People willing to wait out 14 hours overnight for an event where Hailey is not even at, talks to how much people really love this brand. And again, you don't have to look any further than this 4 results, and we're only in North America and the U.K., massive global opportunity for that and our ability to continue to help rhode grow.

Right. Similar philosophy, but what can e.l.f. bring to rhode? And as rhode has come into your organization, what have you learned from them so far?

So I think, first of all, our innovation process -- I mean, our acquisition process is different. Not only has a very high bar where we looked at a lot of different things, but only Naturium and rhode really were the ones we executed on because they fit our vision. But our model, we never do any synergy math. It's all about growth and what we see in the potential of the business going forward. And it's more of a pull model. We never direct within these businesses what they need. So in rhode's case, for example, when we looked at them from a diligence standpoint, we said, hey, you don't actually have a field sales support for Sephora and you're about to do a big launch. And they said, can you help us out there? Before we even close, we built them out of field sales team. Obviously, our expertise with retail and being able to manage those customer relationships is an area. I'd say we have massive capability from an innovation and marketing standpoint that can further help rhode. And in turn, rhode has helped us. Their engagement model is similar to e.l.f. but different. So we're learning things from that, letting the team continue to run. But again, it's a pull model. It's very much what we use in Naturium. We've seen very strong growth with Naturium and a very similar approach. What do you need? Naturium had a long list. We need quality, we need regulatory. We don't want to manage our co-pack network. We don't know how to get into Ulta. There's a lot there that we say, hey, we know how to do. And at the same time, there's a lot we've learned from rhode on even e.l.f. SKIN that we've been able to apply. So it's actually a really good acquisition model because we really continue to follow the founders dream. I often say like we're founders -- founder's dream because of -- is we don't -- we continue to nurture what their vision is, bring significant capabilities, but let them continue to drive the remarkable growth they continue to.

Great. And you mentioned that the Sephora launch was 2.5x the next largest launch, obviously, very impressive. Can you just spend a bit of time discussing how the business has trended since then? Any color on more recent trends, particularly with the birthday edit line out recently? Just give us a bit of update. And then longer term, as you think about what you're going to do with this business, can you discuss your innovation plans and plans to expand the business geographically, internationally? And any thoughts around additional U.S. retail partners over time? I know it's early, but any general thoughts looking out?

So the business continues to perform extremely well, not only at launch, but as we continue to see a build since that launch, we've seen very strong growth rates, very strong productivity. I think they're the #1 skin care brand now at Sephora already. And so we continue to see incredible strength. In terms of the future, we will -- I think there's a few areas that we'll continue to focus on. One, as you mentioned on innovation. The innovation approach on rhode is not to overproliferate SKUs, but to be very thoughtful in the SKUs or the items that really fit kind of the lifestyle brand that Hailey has created. So we have a rich pipeline in skin care. You'll be seeing some more things come out here in the next couple of months. And so we'll continue to feed the innovation pipeline. Obviously, we bring a lot to that party. Second is in marketing. rhode has pretty low aided awareness or actually unaided awareness. And if you take a look at what e.l.f. has been able to do, growing our unaided awareness from 13% to 45% in just a few years, we believe we can do the same with rhode in terms of bringing even more consumers into the franchise. And the third area, I would say, is in our ability to expand the distribution footprint. Our primary partner is Sephora. We are in the exclusivity period with Sephora. They're a terrific partner and helping nurture a brand and continue to grow it. We're only in North America and the U.K. That means the rest of Sephora, the largest global beauty retailer is still open to us, and there's a lot of appetite for that. And then after that, we'll take a look based on what Hailey is interested and where the business is. But right now, I'd say Sephora would be our main focus from a distribution standpoint, then we'll see from there. But I got to tell you, there hasn't -- since we closed this transaction, there hasn't been a retailer we work with that hasn't called me and said, oh my God, when can we get rhode? And I'm you're going to have to be patient. We have a pretty good plot right now.

Right. Okay. And help us dimensionalize where the brand is going over the next few years from a product category standpoint. It's a pretty narrow footprint today. So just how do you think through that strategically as you look out over the next few years?

Well, we see rhode as being very elastic because it's based on Hailey's lifestyle, but she's very thoughtful, as I mentioned, on the curated lifestyle. So I'd say the primary focus for us is skin care. We're seeing tremendous growth in skin. We've also seen great success in hybrid color, and there's more opportunities there as well as accessories. iPhone cases, some of the other accessory items have done well. You'll see additional categories over time. But right now, I would say those first 3 are the primary focus.

Yes. And I would just add to that, that the philosophy behind rhode is one of everything really good. And so you're not going to see this massive SKU proliferation. It's really focused on having the best products possible out there.

Okay. Great. And obviously, very high margins in the business. A retail launch naturally compresses that and you're going after the marketing opportunity, as you mentioned. So just how should we think about the margin contribution from rhode in the short term over the next year or so as you spend aggressively? Will it still have a margin structure that's well above base e.l.f.? Is there a period where it's a bit depressed? How do you think about that?

Yes. We're -- the margin structure that rhode has is pretty incredible. Even with the investments that we want to make behind the brand, we still believe that, that brand can have margins that are above e.l.f. total margins. And so I'm very pleased with what we see from that structure.

Okay. And Tarang, maybe you can talk about skin care opportunity in general, right? You have the Naturium business also. e.l.f. has made some inroads there. So just how you think about the overall ecosystem of your brands within skin care and the opportunity there over time?

Yes. So I mean, if you look at the global market, global skin care is much larger than global color cosmetics. So there's a massive opportunity on skin care. I feel great about our portfolio. e.l.f. SKIN takes a similar strategy as e.l.f. color cosmetics. We take inspiration from prestige, what our community wants, put our e.l.f. twist and introduce an extraordinary value. It's one of the reasons why we've been able to build these growing franchises with our Holy Hydration! line, our Suntouchable! line, bronzing drops. We continue to see great momentum on e.l.f. SKIN. Naturium is complementary to e.l.f. SKIN in that it's clinically effective biocompatible instead of the $9 average unit retail on e.l.f. SKIN, it's about an $18 average unit retail. It is an incredible brand in terms of both facial skin care as well as body and being able to play in that segment as well. And we're seeing great resonance with Naturium. We just launched it in Sephora, Australia, was a terrific launch. We're going to continue to build the footprint. We've expanded space in boots. The Ulta launch that we did this past year has gone extremely well. And so we see plenty of runway for Naturium. And then rhode, like I say, we said for this in 2026, it's going to be about $300 million on a run rate up 40%, and we're still scratching the surface on that brand even with all the success it's had. So we see skin as one of the key drivers of the business over the coming years for many years, with so much opportunity.

Okay. Maybe, Mandy, we can touch on capital allocation. We talked about the repurchases recently, base business growth you're excited about versus M&A and how you think about your capital allocation here, given we've had a number of circumstances change in recent quarters.

Yes. So we're very much focused on the core and our existing portfolio of brands. Now that we have rhode integrated and part of the e.l.f. portfolio, we got a lot to focus on there. I would say we've been focused on team and infrastructure. Those have been the primary investments that we've made over these last few years, whether that be behind international or other opportunities that we see, skin care, things of that nature and just making sure that we have the right team in place to support that. And so those are going to continue to be our priorities. Obviously, this year, we also had our ERP transition. That was a big use of capital for this past year. And so we are just continuing to make sure that we have the infrastructure back of house in order as we continue to scale this company.

And I'd add to it on the M&A front, we're in a great position. We have such strong organic growth in our existing portfolio, such great opportunity. It puts a very high bar on M&A. But we also have a very strong balance sheet. Even after the rhode acquisition, our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio is less than 2 turns. And so if we saw another Naturium or another rhode, we have the capacity or ability to do that, but our main focus is on realizing the strong organic growth of our existing portfolio. It's a very strong portfolio, but it's a great position to be in where you can really get the cream of what's in the category and use that to further enhance.

Great. Mandy, maybe we can turn to the SG&A line and split it into non-marketing and marketing. Your guidance for the back half implies a pretty big jump in SG&A, 35%, 40% year-over-year. Obviously, some of that's rhode. But if we assume that's 25%, 30%, there's still a pretty big increase in that base business, non-marketing SG&A. Help us understand where that's going to, what kind of ROI you're getting behind it? Is that sort of required to drive growth in this environment? Or does it position you for forward growth with a lot of investment over the next couple of quarters here? How do you think about that?

Maybe let me take a step back and just give the overarching perspective on the second half. So second half, what we outlooked on our November call was 24% to 27% growth -- top line growth in the second half. We started this conversation with focusing on organic growth of 2% to 5% in the second half. But on a total company standpoint, we expect 24% to 27% top line growth, which we believe is incredibly strong. We just talked about rhode. Rhode is a major contributor to that growth. From an expense standpoint, into the second half, we did have marketing spend shift. So we quantified that at like 500 to 600 basis points of incremental that we'd be picking up in the second half, just given we didn't spend at the levels that we had targeted in the first half of the year. We're still targeting 24% to 26% as our percent of net sales on marketing for this year. It's just going to be weighted more to the second half. The other areas that we have invested behind, again, go back to that team and infrastructure piece that I talked about, making sure that we have the right team in place, adding team members, particularly on the international side of the house. And then also, if we think about infrastructure and the space gains that we've gotten, the visual merchandising and fixturing that come along with that have also been a big source of spend for us this year.

Okay. And I'm assuming some of that continues into the first half of next year, do you annualize it? And then how do you think about the payback from that in terms of the ROI? Is it, again, sort of required to drive growth in this environment? Is it more it gives you incremental opportunities as you look out?

Yes. So from a marketing standpoint, we continue to see ROIs well above category benchmarks. And so that would tell us that we should continue to invest behind our marketing and digital. We're seeing strong returns there. I would say on non-marketing SG&A, we do think there's a path back to getting leverage in that spend, and we'll have to see where we get to as we turn the page to fiscal '27.

Okay. That's helpful. Tarang, we're coming off a period with a very large percentage price increase. So I'd just love to get your perspective on how the business is performing post that, brand equity, what you're seeing from a competitive standpoint, what you're hearing from retailers post such a large increase.

So we're pleased with our price increase. As you may recall, because of tariffs, we took a $1 price increase across our entire portfolio. It's a 15% price increase, a pretty big price increase. And on a 15% price increase, we're only seeing low single-digit unit decline. So actually quite good if you think of a 15% price increase. It's one of the things that's driven kind of our overall sales for sure. So I'd say we feel great from pricing overall. And that's an environment we're the only ones who've really taken pricing. right? And part of it is we tend to lead when there's an external event, the pricing action. And then we see competitors follow at a different point. There are different cadences. A lot of them will come out in spring or in the summer with their price increases. And we're different that way. Historically and going forward, we've always driven our growth through unit growth, which is different than many of our competitors who rely on price increases and average unit retail growth to drive their price increases. So we feel we're very well positioned in terms of being able to continue the strong consumption given what we've seen and how both consumers and retailers have reacted. On top of that, I'd say our focus will be on unit growth. And we think particularly if I think about lapping the price increase that we've just taken, we have 4 key levers that we've always used, that value proposition, the innovation that we have, the marketing engine that Mandy talked about and then that proactive approach to optimizing our space in the retailers we're in with changing out the assortment and where we go through. So I think that's been a pretty successful formula. Even our previous 2 price increases. We've been able to not only do well through the price increase given our value proposition, actually improve that value proposition as competitors start taking pricing, but then continue to drive very strong unit growth even after the pricing action, and we'll continue to follow that same approach.

Okay. And maybe just give us your general thoughts around the holiday season and how you're performing in the U.S. again, post this price increase and keeping in mind it's a peak seasonal period for you and the volatility we've seen in the category recently.

Well, I think like everyone else, we're worried about the state of the consumer on the macro more broadly. We've actually been pleasantly surprised by the consumer spending through at least the initial part of the holiday season. We're seeing -- even as consumers are being more choiceful, they continue to choose e.l.f. We're having a good holiday season to start off with, and we're hopeful as we continue, particularly as we then roll into our spring innovation, we're actually quite hopeful.

Great. Well, we'll end things there. Thank you so much for coming. We appreciate it.

Thank you so much, Dara.

Thank you for having us.