L'Oreal resists the pandemic with a 5% drop in its annual profit

L'Oreal, the French cosmetics giant, held the guy in 2020 despite the pandemic.

This is revealed by the annual results published today, which reflect a net profit of 3,567 million euros, a fall of just 5% compared to the profit of 2019, and total income of 27,992 million, 6.3% less.

Proof that the impact of Covid-19 has been reduced is the fact that the company's board has proposed the distribution of a dividend of four euros per share, 4% more than the one distributed last year despite lower profits .

The end of the year was especially positive for L'Oreal.

In the fourth quarter, its sales recovered the levels of the same period of 2019, rising to 7,878.8 million, compared to 7,879.3 the previous year, when the pandemic had not yet appeared.

In fact, in comparable terms the fourth quarter of 2020 has represented a sales growth of almost 5%.

The recovery of the turnover has been progressive, after these were affected in the first half of the year by the health crisis.

If the first quarter ended with a drop of 4.3%, the situation worsened in the second with a fall of 19.4%.

In the third, the situation improved, with revenues 2% below those of the same period of the year, until reaching a recovery in the last quarter.

All accompanied by a 62% growth in sales over the internet. 

"Thanks to its strength in electronic and digital commerce, which has once again increased considerably, L'Oréal has managed to maintain a close relationship with all its customers and largely compensate for the closure of points of sale," he explained in a statement from the president and CEO of L'Oreal, Jean-Paul Agon. 

The behavior between product categories and markets has been uneven.

In the first case, the biggest drop in income was suffered by cosmetics for professionals, with 10%.

The category of mass consumption, the main one for the group, also fell considerably, by 8.2% to 11,704 million.

L'Oreal explains that the measures to control the pandemic "had a significant impact on the makeup market," while hair dyeing products grew in double digits.

Skin care items also performed well.

For its part, the L'Oreal Luxe division, focused on the premium market, had a sales drop of 7.6% to 10,180 million.

The one that did grow, and in an important way, was the dermocosmetics division, by 13% to revenues of 3,011 million, thanks to a significant boost in online commerce.

By markets, Western Europe was the one that performed the worst, with a drop of 9.2%, while North America did it by 8.8%.

The new markets division, which includes the Asia Pacific region, along with Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East fell 3.2%.