Welcome in, today is Friday, August twenty-first, and we begin with Estée Lauder's profit outlook, reported by The Manila Times. Estée Lauder has guided fiscal twenty twenty-seven adjusted earnings per share to a range of three dollars ten to three dollars thirty-five, a midpoint above the analyst consensus of three dollars eighteen, according to data compiled by LSEG in that reporting. That range is the demand benchmark buyers and brand teams will plan against this year. Fourth-quarter sales of three point six three billion dollars came in ahead of the three point five four billion estimate, per the same account, and adjusted quarterly profit of thirty-nine cents a share ran against expectations of thirty-two. Shares rose about eighteen percent in early trading. Luxury fragrance carried the quarter. Le Labo and Tom Ford drove ten percent net sales growth. Makeup was flat and hair care fell one percent, and chief executive Stéphane de La Faverie said the company would apply its fragrance and skin care playbook to both. The company also recorded a thirty-eight-million-dollar tariff refund benefit in cost of sales, against a full-year gross tariff impact of one hundred and two million. Industry reaction leans toward foregrounding the cost side of the turnaround, with some reading margin recovery rather than growth as what is actually carrying the profit outlook. Also today, Coty. Fourth-quarter revenue of one point two seven billion dollars beat the one point one nine billion consensus, but the adjusted loss came in at two cents a share against a forecast one-cent loss, according to Investing dot com. Reported net loss widened to one hundred forty-four million dollars from seventy-two million a year earlier. Adjusted gross margin fell one hundred and forty basis points to sixty point nine percent on lower volumes, excess inventory and tariffs, per that reporting, while like-for-like sales were down one percent in the quarter and five percent across the year. Following our earlier coverage of the Gucci licence moving early back to Kering, the company now calls fiscal twenty twenty-seven a transition year and has withheld full-year guidance, with the step-down in sales and profit landing in fiscal twenty twenty-eight. That is the clearest read yet on what a top fragrance licence is worth on the way out. Net debt closed the year at two point nine billion dollars. Separately, Chinese brand PROYA is entering the United States through Ulta Beauty, according to Global Cosmetics News. That reporting says the brand joins Ulta's prestige skincare portfolio in November, leading with its Advanced Firming and Original Repair collections, in what the same account frames as a significant step in parent Proya Cosmetics' international expansion. The route is as instructive as the brand: a national prestige retailer rather than a marketplace or a standalone launch, which is the shelf anyone weighing an inbound US entry will study. Industry reaction leans toward treating it as a test case for whether Chinese beauty can reach the mainstream Western breakout K-beauty achieved, with a recurring concern that consumer perceptions around ingredient quality and country of origin remain the main hurdle. Now to Europe, where the compliance clock has already started. The Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation entered into force across the European Union on the twelfth of August, establishing a harmonised framework for packaging and packaging waste throughout the Single Market, Premium Beauty News reports with AFP. For anyone selling into the bloc, that pulls primary packs, refills and packaging-waste reporting under one regime rather than a patchwork. Practitioner reaction leans toward treating it as a chain of milestones rather than a single deadline, with the near-term work described as data readiness, meaning packaging bills of materials, supplier documentation and material traceability, ahead of later design and recyclability thresholds. A related concern in the channel is that harmonisation may prove thinner in practice, since registration, fees and reporting still vary country by country. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. dsm-firmenich's board has unanimously proposed independent director Richard Ridinger as its next chairman, succeeding Thomas Leysen, who is retiring, per Global Cosmetics News. Haut.AI and Grupo Boticário are taking AI skin analysis from a twenty-four-store pilot to roughly four thousand O Boticário stores in Brazil, in what the companies describe to Cosmetics Business as one of the largest in-store rollouts of its kind. Target has raised its full-year sales and earnings outlook after second-quarter net sales rose five point three percent to twenty-six point five billion dollars, with beauty delivering high single-digit growth, according to Global Cosmetics News. US prestige beauty sales rose seven percent to seventeen point one billion dollars in the first half of the year, with fragrance demand driving the gain, according to Circana data reported by Cosmetics Business. And finally, K-beauty distributor Silicon2 has secured a three hundred billion won investment from CVC Capital Partners to accelerate its international distribution and logistics buildout, per Global Cosmetics News.