ULTA earnings call for the period ending September 30, 2024.
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Ulta Beauty (ULTA -1.74%)
Q3 2024 Earnings Call
Dec 05, 2024, 4:30 p.m. ET
Contents:
- Prepared Remarks
- Questions and Answers
- Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Good afternoon, and welcome to Ulta Beauty’s conference call to discuss results for the Ulta Beauty third quarter 2024 earnings results. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and then reenter the queue for any additional questions.
[Operator instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Ms. Kiley Rawlins, vice president of investor relations. Ms.
Rawlins, you may proceed.
Kiley F. Rawlins — Vice President, Investor Relations
Thank you, Julian. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for a discussion of Ulta Beauty’s results for the third quarter of fiscal 2024. Hosting our call today are Dave Kimbell, chief executive officer; and Paula Oyibo, chief financial officer. Kecia Steelman, president and chief operating officer, will join us for the Q&A session.
Before we begin, I’d like to remind you of the company’s safe harbor language. Many of our remarks today will contain forward-looking statements, which speak only as of today, December 5, 2024. We refer you to our earnings release and SEC filings, where you will find a number of factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. We’ll begin this afternoon with prepared remarks from Dave and Paula.
Following our prepared comments, we’ll open the call for questions. As always, the IR team will be available for any follow-up questions after the call. Now, I’d like to turn the call over to Dave. Dave?
David C. Kimbell — Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Kiley, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate your interest in Ulta Beauty. Our team delivered improved performance for this quarter with better-than-expected sales and profitability. For the quarter, net sales increased 1.7% to $2.5 billion and comparable sales increased 0.6%.
Diluted EPS increased 1.4% to $5.14 per share. As we shared on our last call, we are navigating a number of headwinds, including the normalization of the U.S. beauty category a dynamic consumer environment, and elevated competition, particularly in prestige beauty. We are starting to see benefit from actions we are taking to reinforce our market position and improve our performance.
And while the headwinds have not abated, we are making progress. In the third quarter, our prestige market share trends improved, resulting in flat market share this quarter based on Circana data for the 13 weeks ended November 2, 2024. The trend was driven primarily by improvements in makeup and hair, and we continue to see strength in fragrance and skin care. Our share performance in mass beauty was consistent with the second quarter.
Comp growth improved from the second quarter trend driven by stronger transaction trends across both stores and e-commerce channels. We continue to expand our loyalty program, ending the quarter with 44.4 million active members, 5% more than last year. We continued to convert new members. We reactivated more lapsed members, and we improved existing member retention.
