L'Oréal CEO calls GLP-1 drugs 'very important' for skin care sales
SkinCeuticals and Kiehl's already sell products designed to complement the drugs, while L'Oréal has not said what they earn.
The spread of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs is changing what skin care people buy, and L'Oréal's chief executive says the company already sells products built around it. Nicolas Hieronimus made the case on a call with investors on 22 October, after the group's third-quarter 2026 results.
"We also see, which is a very important phenomenon for us, the rise of the use of GLP-1 is having an impact on beauty consumption and skin care consumption, in particular," said Hieronimus. The medications he has in mind are Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro.
"So, we have products in SkinCeuticals, but also in Kiehl's, that have been designed to work alongside and complement GLP-1, and its side effects on skin sagging or other things like that," he added. He named no product, price or launch date.
His comments came with a quarter L'Oréal called exceptional. Sales rose 7.2% to €11.6 billion in the three months to 30 September. We reported on how skincare returned to growth in that quarter when the figures first came out.
The dermatological beauty division was the main driver, growing 11.6%. All three of what the company calls its billionaire brands, La Roche-Posay, CeraVe and SkinCeuticals, grew by double digits. SkinCeuticals is one of the two brands Hieronimus named on the GLP-1 point.
How widely the drugs are used
According to the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index, 11% of US adults currently use GLP-1 medications for weight loss. A further share brings the total to 15% of US adults who have used them at some point in their lives.
In Britain, research from UCL and BMC Medicine estimates that 1.6 million adults across England, Wales and Scotland took the drugs for weight loss between early 2024 and early 2025. That is a count of users over a year, not a snapshot.
Cosmetics Business reported earlier this year on a rise in beauty innovations claiming to target skin volume loss caused by the medications. Hieronimus's remarks put a large cosmetics group on record as selling into the same problem, which is skin sagging.
The framing is one of demand rather than threat. A customer who loses weight on a GLP-1 drug is, in Hieronimus's telling, a customer whose skin needs have changed, and L'Oréal wants its dermocosmetics brands to be the ones that answer.
What L'Oréal has not said
L'Oréal has not disclosed how much SkinCeuticals or Kiehl's earn from GLP-1-related products today. The remarks were made in answer to the investor call, and no sales figure or target for the category came with them.
The usage figures are from the US and Britain only. Gallup's 11% and UCL's 1.6 million are the sole numbers in the source material, and neither is a measure of how many of those users buy skin care.
L'Oréal is also busy elsewhere. We reported that L'Oréal Travel Retail and Avolta signed a joint sustainability plan targeting 10% refillable fragrance by 2030, backed by low-emission transport and CSR training for beauty advisors across airport, cruise and rail hubs.
On the deal side, we reported that Giorgio Armani's will sets an 18-month clock on selling 15% of his company, and names L'Oréal, LVMH and EssilorLuxottica as the buyers he wanted. Talks are now reported to be moving.
L'Oréal Luxe is the group's high-end division, and it is a separate business from the dermatological arm that carries the GLP-1 products. The 11.6% growth came from that dermatological arm.
Kiehl's, the second brand he named, was not among the three billionaire brands the company singled out for double-digit growth. Whether its GLP-1 range has moved its own numbers is not stated in the material available.
The next test is whether L'Oréal puts a figure on the category. Hieronimus gave none on 22 October, and the source material does not say when the group will report one.
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