Rhode's European summer fuels 51% sales spike for E.l.f. Beauty

E.l.f. Beauty reported net sales of $520.8 million for its second quarter of fiscal 2027, an increase of 51% year on year. The period ended on 30 September. The company disclosed the figure on Wednesday, with chief executive Tarang Amin leading the investor call.

The growth was a sharp acceleration from the 35% and 36% quarterly sales gains the company recorded in May and August. The step up was driven by the E.l.f. stable, which includes Naturium, E.l.f. Cosmetics and E.l.f. Skin, alongside new launches in hair care and fragrance.

But the quarter belonged to Rhode, the skin-care brand founded by Hailey Bieber. Wholesale orders from Sephora ahead of Rhode's entry into 19 European markets in September carried the result. Amin called the category-defining detail plain: the launch was Sephora's largest in its history.

Chief financial officer Mandy Fields split the growth in two. American net sales rose 25% over the quarter, while international net sales climbed 165%. She said Rhode's European debut was the store's biggest launch ever, second only to the brand's own U.S. rollout a year earlier.

The gap international is closing

Amin sketched the runway he sees ahead. On a trailing twelve-month basis, international trade made up roughly 25% of E.l.f. Beauty's net sales. His legacy peers are nearer 70%, and the chief executive framed that distance as the company's single largest opportunity.

The demand, Amin argued, is already visible before a store ever opens. Around 65% of E.l.f. Cosmetics' social following lives outside the United States, and for Rhode the share is 75%. Even after the European launch, Rhode sits in only 40% of Sephora's global doors.

Rhode's direct-to-consumer channel is holding up through the retail expansion, Amin said. A string of exclusive drops on the brand's own site has kept that business moving, including a collaboration with influencer Alexandra Leclerc built around limited-edition colours sold only through DTC.

The Leclerc drop drew a waitlist of 200,000 people, and once the products went on sale most of them sold out in under an hour, Amin told investors. That is the proof he points to that exclusive colour ways can prop up a direct channel even as retail doors multiply.

Where the brand goes next

Expansion is the stated plan, not the open question. Rhode will keep growing its international presence through Sephora, and Amin left no room for doubt about the ambition. As he put it to investors, there is not a market in the world that does not want Rhode right now.

The arithmetic of the quarter backs the claim. International sales more than doubled, and the Sephora Europe orders arrived as a single wholesale event timed to the September market entries. Rhode converted that one order into the strongest second quarter E.l.f. Beauty has posted in its recent run.

The company's framing matters for what it has not said. No profit figure accompanied the sales disclosure, and no guidance for the full year was given on the call. The growth rate is the story; the margin beneath it is the number investors will have to wait for.

Still, the direction is unambiguous. Two straight quarters of growth in the mid-30s have now given way to one over 50%, and the driver is a brand barely a year into its international retail life. Rhode's U.S. launch set a benchmark that Europe has now nearly matched, second only to home soil.

Amin returned to the legs in the runway more than once. The 75% overseas share of Rhode's social audience is the number he returns to, because it measures demand before distribution catches up. Forty percent of Sephora's doors is not a ceiling; it is the map of what is still closed.

The DTC momentum also carries a lesson for how retail and direct channels can stack rather than cannibalise. Exclusive colour ways moved under an hour on the site while the Sephora launch was under way, suggesting the two channels are not splitting a fixed pool of Rhode shoppers.

That is the structure of the quarter: a wholesale order that broke Sephora's records, a social audience that skews three-quarters international, and a direct channel kept warm by scarcity. E.l.f. Beauty has not forecast how far the European momentum runs, and the company did not commit a number.

What it did commit to was more of the same. Rhode will keep rolling out across international markets, Amin said, and the company's leadership treats the distance from its legacy peers as room that can be closed rather than a structural gap.

The next check on that thesis is the company's third quarter, which will show whether the Sephora Europe order reruns or settles into a slower base. For now, the record stands: Rhode delivered the largest launch Sephora has ever seen, and E.l.f. Beauty's 51% is the receipt.

Amin closed on confidence rather than numbers. The company gave no full-year guidance on the call, and the call itself was the disclosure: a quarterly jump, an international line up, and a brand whose biggest markets, by his own account, have not opened yet.

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