Estée Lauder CFO on driving a turnaround led by consumer-first innovation

The company beat both revenue and earnings expectations in its latest quarter. “2025 was a year of stabilization, building credibility, and promises kept,” EVP and CFO Akhil Shrivastava told me.

Shrivastava, a decade-long ELC employee, was appointed finance chief in November 2024, taking over from the retired Tracey Travis, and this occurred shortly before Stéphane de La Faverie became President and CEO. According to Shrivastava, their initial joint earnings call in February was noteworthy because it introduced the “Beauty Reimagined” strategy.

The strategy was developed to rebuild trust, tackle falling revenue, a weakening of customer interest in Asia, enhance market responsiveness, and counter increasing rivalry. It involves organizational changes, job cuts, and a stronger focus on new product development and online commerce.

For the quarter ending Sept. 30, ELC (No. 279 on the Coins2Day 500) saw early recovery in China and travel retail, posting 4% year-over-year sales growth in Q1 fiscal 2026. Consistently landing at the upper end of guidance has helped rebuild stakeholder confidence, Shrivastava said.

Looking ahead to the new fiscal year, Shrivastava described it as the “year of returning to growth”—not just in top-line revenue, but also profitability. For Q1, he noted margin expansion, an almost doubled EPS, and 3% organic sales growth. This wasn’t just a matter of tighter cost controls; it reflected a strategic decision to invest long-term in consumer needs, bucking the trend of short-term cost-cutting, Shrivastava explained. 

For the quarter, operating margin rose 300 basis points to 7.3%, driven by a 3% reduction in non-consumer-facing costs, despite normalized incentive expenses. This enabled a 4% increase in consumer-facing investments.

With the consumer as the primary focus

The strategy hinges on a more focused consumer approach. Shrivastava stated that ELC is allocating resources to media, product advancements, and new releases like La Mer's nighttime offerings and Clinique's serums. The organization has pinpointed novel operational methods, enabling markets and local teams to accelerate their pace and render choices with greater proximity to consumers.

“We changed our structure so leaders in New York focus on brand strategy, while affiliates execute locally with unconstrained authority,” he explained, which has unlocked both speed and accountability. Drawing a sports analogy, Shrivastava noted: You lead where needed, but also support the team collectively.

Shrivastava outlined ELC's core leadership principles, emphasizing four key areas: acting as owners, prioritizing the consumer, generating value, and demonstrating courageous governance. He asserted that finance's role should be to stimulate demand, rather than solely focusing on cost containment.

“Leadership is about attitude and broad perspective—feeling like your name is on the building,” he said, encouraging team members to understand the consumer deeply, regardless of their function. “Value creation is long-term—growth, margin, and cash flow go hand-in-hand, and governance means doing the right thing, with support from the top,” he added.

Lessons learned

Prior to his tenure at ELC, Shrivastava accumulated 18 years of experience at Procter & Gamble, holding various positions in operational auditing, supply chain management, marketing, and manufacturing facilities throughout Asia and the United States. He cited the strategic planning for Tide's market entry to Indian consumers as a significant developmental period: “We had to reimagine the product and communications for one rupee per wash—requiring ruthless prioritization and start-up mentality.” He further commented, “That end-to-end understanding, from engineering to marketing, translated seamlessly to luxury beauty and problem-solving at Estée Lauder.”

Shrivastava explained that his career at ELC has been shaped by his curiosity and his readiness to explore novel opportunities. “I started with the Estée Lauder brand, worked on other brands, moved into treasury, tackled supply chain challenges, and took on operational excellence,” he stated.

These experiences equipped “breadth but also depth”—crucial for effective leadership in today's large organizations. He urges his teams to adopt a comparable approach, readily accepting new responsibilities and consistently developing fresh competencies.

SherylEstrada
[email protected]

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Coins2Day 500 Power Moves

Zac Coughlin was appointed CFO of Sirius XM Holdings Inc. (No. 448), effective Jan. 1, 2026. Coughlin will succeed Tom Barry, who is stepping down coughlin presently holds the position of CFO at PVH Corp. Previously, he was the group CFO and chief operating officer at DFS Group Limited, a division of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton Group. Prior to his tenure at DFS, Coughlin served as CFO for Converse, Inc., which is part of Nike, Inc. His professional journey began at Ford Motor Company, where he occupied various worldwide financial leadership positions. 

Each Friday, the Coins2Day 500 Power Moves column highlights executive changes within Coins2Day 500 corporations—see the most recent edition. 

More notable moves:

Nancy Erba was appointed CFO of Power Integrations (Nasdaq: POWI), a semiconductor firm, starting January 5, 2026. Erba most recently held the CFO role at Infinera Corporation, an optical networking solutions provider, from 2019 until its acquisition by Nokia earlier this year. Prior to that, she was CFO at Immersion Corporation. Previously, Erba occupied a series of progressively higher leadership roles at Seagate Technology.

Ravi Thanawala, CFO and EVP, International at Papa John’s International, Inc. (Nasdaq: PZZA) has been elevated to the roles of CFO and President, North America, with immediate effect. Chris Lyn-Sue will now oversee the company's international operations. Thanawala became Papa John’s CFO in 2023 and was subsequently promoted to CFO and EVP, International in 2024. He also briefly held the position of interim CEO for the company from March to August 2024.

Big Deal

Broadridge's seventh yearly CX and Communications Consumer Insights study, surveying more than 4,000 consumers in America and Canada, indicates a record-breaking level of customer unhappiness, with 71% believing most businesses must enhance their customer service, a figure double that of 2019.

According to the report, a total of 59% of those surveyed have lost faith in a business that provides a subpar experience or communicates ambiguously. Broadridge suggests that to foster trust, businesses ought to prioritize the following: respecting customers' chosen communication methods; offering an easy avenue for interaction across various channels; and streamlining how customers conduct business with them.

Going deeper

"Nvidia’s earnings could answer the AI bubble question and upend global markets in moment of truth for Magnificent 7" is a new article by Coins2Day's Jim Edwards. 

Edwards writes: "Nvidia's Jensen Huang says he doesn’t believe we’re in an artificial intelligence bubble. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos says we probably are in one. OpenAI’s Sam Altman, the human face of the AI boom, has also invoked a bubble, adding, 'I do think some investors are likely to lose a lot of money.' This, in a nutshell, is the narrative of the entire global stock market right now and the conundrum that no tech CEO or asset manager can avoid addressing: Is AI a bubble or not?" You can read the complete article here. 

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