After taking the reins during one of the most tumultuous times in the company's history, de La Faverie is set not just on restoring growth and profitability but on a total transformation to ready it for the future.
It’s late afternoon on a summer Friday in August, but Stéphane de La Faverie is giving Monday energy — upbeat, locked in and thrumming with excitement as he talks business.
The president and chief executive officer of the Estée Lauder Cos. has just wrapped up one of the most significant weeks of his career, sharing the results of his first fiscal year as leader of the prestige beauty player.
After three straight years of organic sales losses, the company returned to the right side of the balance sheet, reporting increases in both net sales and profitability and clearly signaling a turning of the tides.
The significance of the word “again” is not lost on de La Faverie or the Wall Street and industry analysts who have tracked the company’s precipitous drop since 2022. In early January of that year, Lauder’s stock reached an all-time high of $371.86. But as has been well documented, a perfect storm hit: The combination of a bear market with the steep decline of China and the travel retail channel — two of Lauder’s key growth engines at that time — coupled with a lack of product innovation across its portfolio sent the company’s stock price into a tailspin.
By the time de La Faverie took the reins as CEO on Jan.
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