Cosmetic change: Beauty spending is starting to slow

Beauty stocks fell after Ulta issued a gloomy outlook for cosmetic spending

4/5/24 2:16PM

Beauty fades‍

The beauty industry has seen some unsightly setbacks this week. Shares of chain retailer Ulta Beauty fell 15% on Wednesday, following warnings from CEO Dave Kimbell that demand for beauty products was cooling — dragging cosmetic stocks E.l.f. Beauty (-12%), Estee Lauder (-4%), and Coty (-6%) down with it.‍

Ulta now forecasts comparable sales to slacken to 4-5% growth for the year ahead, down from more than 15% growth in fiscal 2022. With execs outlining the significant stalling of luxury makeup purchases, investors lost yet more confidence in Estée Lauder in particular, as the struggling legacy brand’s pivot away from department stores has yet to pay off.‍

Makeunder?‍

While beauty has long been considered a safe bet in retail, with consumer spending in the sector tending to stay relatively constant during times of financial hardship (see the “Lipstick Effect”), this slowdown indicates that perhaps beauty shoppers aren’t completely immune to 2-and-a-half years of inflation.‍

E.l.f Beauty especially could find itself on something of a powder keg with the impending fate of the TikTok bill. Having blown up on the ByteDance-owned app with Gen-Z-oriented marketing campaigns, and last week becoming the first brand to feature in a TikTok Shop Super Brand Day, the vegan cosmetics company has seen sales skyrocket, notching 17 consecutive years of growth. Indeed, all slowdowns are relative — and the brand has plenty of momentum to fall back on, reporting an 85% jump in sales in its most recent quarter.

Tom Jones10h

OpenAI’s ARR reached over $20 billion in 2025, CFO says

Sam Altman’s $500 billion artificial intelligence behemoth hit a major financial milestone last year, according to a new blog post over the weekend from OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar, as the company confirmed it had hit a more than $20 billion annual revenue run rate at the end of 2025.

Elsewhere in the blog post, Friar spent time addressing the company’s shifting goals, referencing plans to “close the distance between where intelligence is advancing and how individuals, companies, and countries actually adopt and use it.” As has become customary in the AI company press release genre, the CFO was also keen to tout the unending growth of the business, writing:

“Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”
“Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”

And, perhaps most importantly for current backers and those keeping an eye on the private company before its rumored mega IPO:

“Revenue followed the same curve growing 3X year over year, or 10X from 2023 to 2025: $2B ARR in 2023, $6B in 2024, and $20B+ in 2025. This is never-before-seen growth at such scale.”

That latest figure has certainly set tongues in the tech world wagging, just as the company announced it would begin rolling out ads to free and ChatGPT Go users. It also puts the chatbot giant a fair way ahead of competitors like Anthropic, the company behind Claude.

OpenAI Anthropic ARR race — Sherwood News

A business that scales with the value of intelligence

“Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”
“Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”

And, perhaps most importantly for current backers and those keeping an eye on the private company before its rumored mega IPO:

“Revenue followed the same curve growing 3X year over year, or 10X from 2023 to 2025: $2B ARR in 2023, $6B in 2024, and $20B+ in 2025. This is never-before-seen growth at such scale.”

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Ford reportedly in talks to buy hybrid vehicle batteries from Chinese auto giant BYD

Detroit’s Ford and China’s BYD are said to be in ongoing talks to partner on an agreement that would see Ford buy hybrid vehicle batteries from BYD, according to reporting from The Wall Street Journal.

The report comes just days after President Trump toured a Ford factory in Michigan and implied openness to Chinese automakers coming to the US.

“If they want to come in and build a plant... that’s great, I love that,” Trump said on January 13. “Let China come in, let Japan come in.”

Last week, China’s Geely Automobile Holdings said it expects to make an announcement about expanding into the US within the next three years. Chinese carmakers currently face huge tariffs and software restrictions, effectively barring their vehicles from the US.

Ford has doubled down on hybrid vehicles amid high EV costs and the end of federal EV tax credits. The automaker is currently building a battery plant in Michigan where it plans to use tech from Chinese battery maker CATL.

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