Ulta BeautyULTA
$24.1B market capThe largest US beauty retailer, from mass brands to prestige, with salons in store.
Ulta Beauty in 36 checks
Ulta Beauty at a glance: how it scores on value, growth, quality, health, shareholder returns and trend. The fuller the shape, the stronger the company. Behind each axis are six pass-or-fail checks from its filings, spelled out in the chapters below. Point at an axis to see them.
Strong business at a reasonable price - 22 of 36 checks passed.
Value
What you pay today for what the business produces, measured against ULTA's own history and its peers, never a universal rule.
Fairly priced on some measures, rich on others - earnings multiple below its own long-run norm.
Is the price high or low right now, compared to what the market usually pays?
→At 21.0x earnings, the market is paying 40% less than ULTA's own 6-year median of 34.7x. Pessimism is priced in - the question is whether it is deserved.
What has the market paid for ULTA over the years?
◌ 2026 = at the latest close (2026-09-04), over the trailing twelve months; earlier years are annual averages
→At 21.0x earnings, the market is paying 40% less than ULTA's own 6-year median of 34.7x. Pessimism is priced in - the question is whether it is deserved.
What cash return does the business throw off per dollar of market value?
4.8%FCF yield today
◌ 2026 = at the latest close (2026-09-04), over the trailing twelve months; earlier years are annual averages
→At 4.8%, you get less cash per dollar of market value than the 6-year median of 4.9% - the market is charging more for the same cash.
What does “Value” actually mean?
Value asks what you pay for each dollar of earnings, sales or cash the business produces. A high multiple isn't automatically bad - fast growers earn theirs - but a price far above the company's own history means the market expects a lot to go right. We compare each multiple to the company's own past and to its sector, never to a universal rule.
How we scored it · 3 of 6 checks passed
| – | Cheaper than its own history (earnings) | no multiple history |
| ✓ | Earnings yield beats a long bond (4%) | 4.8% vs 4.0% |
| – | Better cash yield than its own history | under 3 years of cash-flow history |
| ✓ | Free cash flow yield above 3% | 4.8% vs 3.0% |
| ✓ | Cheap on enterprise value | 12.53 vs 14.00 (peer median) |
| ✕ | Price isn't outrunning growth | PEG 9.52 |
Growth
What the company has actually reported - is it selling more, and is more of it becoming profit?
Growth is weak or inconsistent - the trend, not the story, is the problem.
Revenue: is the business selling more than it used to?
◌ 2026 = trailing twelve months to the latest filed quarter, not a full fiscal year
→Revenue reached $12.4B in 2025, compounding +7% a year since 2022 though the pace has cooled. The trailing twelve months are already running at $13.0B, ahead of the last full year.
Net income: how much of that revenue becomes profit?
◌ 2026 = trailing twelve months to the latest filed quarter, not a full fiscal year
→Net income was $1.2B in 2025, compounding -2% a year over three years. Trailing twelve-month profit stands at $1.2B.
How fast is it growing, year by year?
+21%revenue growth, FY 2025
Shown separately because they would flatten the axis: 2021 earnings +461% - rebounds off a collapsed prior year.
→In 2025 revenue grew +21% while earnings moved -7% - when the earnings line runs above revenue, each new dollar of sales is arriving more profitably.
What does “Growth” actually mean?
Growth here is what the company has actually reported to the SEC - not a forecast. We look at the last year, the three-year pace, whether growth is speeding up or slowing down, and whether it's been consistent rather than one lucky year. Hatched bars are fourth quarters we derived from annual filings (companies file a full-year 10-K rather than a Q4 report).
How we scored it · 2 of 6 checks passed
| – | Outgrew its sector last year | under 8 quarters of history |
| ✕ | Sustained growth beats its sector (3 years) | 6.7% vs 8.2% (sector 70th pct, n=58) |
| ✓ | Profits grew last year | swung to a profit of $1.2B from a loss |
| ✕ | Profit growth beats its peers | 2.2% vs 4.4% (sector 70th pct, n=23) |
| – | Growth is speeding up, not slowing | under 3 years of history |
| ✓ | Grew per share, not just in total | 39.6% vs 0.0% |
Quality
Whether the growth makes real money - margins, returns on capital, and whether profits turn into cash.
Rare profitability: margins and returns on capital are well above its peers.
Margins: of every $1 of sales, how much survives each cost layer?
◌ 2026 = trailing twelve months to the latest filed quarter (2026-08-01), not a full fiscal year
→Operating margin compressed 4 points to 12% since 2022. After everything, 9 cents of each sales dollar reaches net profit.
Earnings quality: do the reported profits turn into real cash?
◌ 2026 = trailing twelve months to the latest filed quarter (2026-08-01), not a full fiscal year
→Operating cash flow runs at 130% of reported profit, so the earnings are more than backed by cash - depreciation and other non-cash charges are understating what the business actually collects.
What does it earn on the money it uses?
◌ 2026 = trailing twelve months to the latest filed quarter (2026-08-01), not a full fiscal year
→ROE 41% and ROCE 32% sit close together - the returns come from the business itself, not from borrowing.
Where does each dollar of revenue actually go?
→Of $12.4B in sales, $4.8B survives production costs, $1.5B survives running the company, and $1.2B - 9¢ of every dollar - reaches the bottom line.
How much of every sales dollar ends up as free cash?
◌ 2026 = trailing twelve months to the latest filed quarter, not a full fiscal year
→9 cents of every sales dollar became free cash in 2025, down 3 points since 2022.
What does staying competitive cost, per dollar of sales?
◌ 2026 = trailing twelve months to the latest filed quarter (2026-08-01), not a full fiscal year
→The biggest claim on each sales dollar is capital spending, at 4% of revenue (stock compensation 0%).
When sales grow, do profits grow faster?
→Operating profit outgrew revenue in 3 of the last 5 years, most recently -6% against +21%. Each additional dollar of sales is landing more profitably than the last - the definition of operating leverage.
Does ULTA earn more on its capital than that capital costs?
→ULTA earns 32.1% on the capital it employs, well above the 10% most investors treat as the cost of capital. It was 44.4% in 2022, so the trend is down, though the pace has cooled.
What does “Quality” actually mean?
Quality asks whether the growth makes real money. Margins show how much of each sale survives costs; return on equity shows what shareholders earn on their capital; and the profit-to-cash comparison catches companies whose accounting profits never turn into actual cash.
How we scored it · 5 of 6 checks passed
| ✕ | Better gross margins than peers | 39.3% vs 48.1% (sector 70th pct, n=48) |
| ✓ | Runs leaner than peers (operating margin) | 12.5% vs 4.5% (sector 70th pct, n=60) |
| ✓ | Actually profitable | TTM net income $1.2B |
| ✓ | Earns well on shareholders' money | 45.8% vs 18.7% (sector 70th pct, n=45) |
| ✓ | Earns a real return on the capital it employs | 34.5% vs 10.0% |
| ✓ | Profits are cash, not accounting | 1.30 vs 0.80 |
Health
The balance sheet stress test: could ULTA survive a bad year?
A fortress balance sheet - ULTA can survive a very bad year.
Could it handle its debt if things went wrong?
◌ 2026 = the latest balance sheet (2026-08-01), not a fiscal year-end
→Debt of $340M sits against $213M of cash, or 0.1x shareholders' equity. Earnings cover the interest bill 8726 times over, so the debt is comfortably serviced.
Is the company's own capital growing or shrinking?
→The company's own capital grew from $2.3B in 2023 to $2.6B (+16%). The business is building book value rather than consuming it.
What does “Health” actually mean?
Health asks one question: can the business survive a bad year? We check whether near-term bills are covered, whether debt is modest and shrinking, whether earnings comfortably pay the interest, and - for loss-makers - how many years of cash are left at the current burn rate.
How we scored it · 5 of 6 checks passed
| ✕ | Comfortable near-term liquidity | 1.35 vs 1.50 |
| ✓ | Debt isn't dominating | 0.13 vs 1.00 |
| ✓ | Debt trending the right way | liabilities are 62.0% of assets vs 67.8% five years ago |
| ✓ | Earnings cover the interest | 8,726 vs 5.00 |
| ✓ | Converts sales to cash better than its sector | 12.1% vs 6.3% (sector 70th pct, n=62) |
| ✓ | Self-funding | TTM free cash flow $1.1B |
Shareholder returns
How much cash actually flows back to owners - dividends, buybacks, whether the share count truly falls, and whether what is handed back is affordable.
Cash comes back to owners, with a caveat or two in the checks below.
How much goes back to shareholders - and how much leaks out as stock compensation?
→$964M returned last year against $37M of stock issued to employees - the returns outweigh the dilution 25.8-to-1.
How fast is your ownership being diluted - or concentrated?
→The count shrank 13.0% last year - buybacks are outrunning stock compensation.
ULTA has issued or retired shares - did shareholders end up better off?
Both lines start at 100 in 2009, so the gap between them is what each share gained or lost. Share counts are split-adjusted.
→ULTA has shrunk its share count -24% from 2009 to 2025, so each remaining share owns more of the business. Revenue per share is +1234% over the same years.
Why compare buybacks with stock compensation?
A company can trumpet billions in buybacks while quietly issuing nearly as much stock to employees. What matters to you is the net effect: is the share count actually falling? If not, the 'return' is mostly recycling.
How we scored it · 3 of 6 checks passed
| ✓ | Share count isn't climbing | shares down 13.0% over 3 years |
| ✓ | Buybacks outpace the stock issued to staff | $1.2B bought back vs $37M of stock compensation |
| ✕ | What it hands back fits inside its cash flow | 111.2% vs 100.0% |
| ✓ | Meaningful yield to owners (dividends and buybacks) | $1.3B returned, 5.3% of market value |
| – | Reliable payer, never cut | under 2 years of dividend history |
| – | Dividend growing ahead of inflation | under 3 years of dividend history |
Trend analysis
What the market is doing about all of the above. This is price behaviour, not a fact about the business - read it as the market's current opinion, scored on six checks like every other chapter. The market is the S&P 500, measured by the SPY ETF with dividends included, over 3 months (63 trading sessions) and 12 months (252).
Mixed signals from the market - some trends up, some rolling over.
How is ULTA's trend actually behaving right now?
Chart by TradingView
→ULTA is in a clear uptrend. The price is above the band where recent trading settled, and that band is still rising underneath it, so the floor keeps moving up. The last two weeks are running ahead of the last month and the price is above where it stood a month ago, so the shorter-term readings back the trend up. The band is unusually narrow at the moment, which makes it easy to cross in either direction.
How the trend above is worked out
The trend read comes from the daily Ichimoku picture, a standard trend indicator, translated out of its jargon. It builds a band from the midpoints of the last 9, 26 and 52 sessions' highs and lows - in effect, the range where recent trading has settled - and draws that band 26 sessions into the future. Price above the band is an uptrend, below it a downtrend, inside it no trend. Because the band is drawn forward, the support for the next few weeks is already fixed and a change of its direction can be seen coming. We also compare the last two weeks against the last month, and today's price against where it stood a month ago. None of this says anything about the business; it describes the price only, and it is not advice. Where a check says 'the S&P 500', the comparison is with the SPY ETF including dividends, on the same adjusted basis as the stock's own price: short means 3 months, 63 trading sessions; long means 12 months, 252.
How we scored it · 4 of 6 checks passed
| ✓ | Trading above its cloud | 1.00 vs 0.50 |
| ✕ | Long-term trend structure is healthy | 505.67 vs 556.30 |
| ✓ | Rising over 3 months | 20.8% vs 0.0% |
| ✓ | Beating the S&P 500 over 3 months | 20.8% vs 4.7% |
| ✕ | Beating the S&P 500 over 12 months | 6.5% vs 20.0% |
| ✓ | Not in a deep hole | -20.2% from its 52-week high |
Insider activity
What the people running the company do with their own shares - reported to the SEC within two days, classified so pay-plumbing doesn't masquerade as conviction.
Are the people running it buying or selling with their own money?
→No open-market buying, and $1M of selling across 4 months. Selling alone is a weak signal - much of it is pre-scheduled - but the absence of buying tells you no insider saw the price as a bargain.
Who did what, exactly?
| Date | Insider | Role | Type | Shares | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-06-15 | George R Jr Mrkonic | Director | SELL | 383 | $182,247 |
| 2026-04-07 | George R Jr Mrkonic | Director | SELL | 452 | $243,759 |
| 2026-03-15 | Kecia Steelman | President and CEO | tax | 393 | $210,538 |
| 2026-03-15 | Kecia Steelman | President and CEO | tax | 1,491 | $798,759 |
| 2026-03-15 | Anita Jane Ryan | Chief Human Resources Officer | tax | 80 | $42,860 |
| 2026-03-15 | Anita Jane Ryan | Chief Human Resources Officer | tax | 189 | $101,257 |
| 2025-09-04 | Mike C. Smith | Director | SELL | 500 | $264,215 |
| 2025-04-01 | Jodi J Caro | GC, Chief Risk & Compl. Ofc. | exercise | 902 | $157,354 |
| 2025-04-01 | Jodi J Caro | GC, Chief Risk & Compl. Ofc. | SELL | 902 | $332,984 |
Why do the transaction types matter so much?
Most insider filings are not trades: stock grants, option exercises and tax withholding are how executives get paid, and gifts are estate planning. The signal lives in open-market transactions - a buy means an insider chose to spend their own cash on the stock. Sells are murkier: many are pre-scheduled 10b5-1 plans set months in advance. That's why the chart counts only open-market activity, and the table labels every row.