Written by StockNews.com

Estee Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE: EL) early Wednesday posted much better than expected...third quarter earnings results and offered a full-year outlook that was in-line with Wall Street expectations.

The New York City-based cosmetics giant reported Q3:

• earnings per share (EPS) of $0.91, which was $0.18 better than the Wall Street consensus estimate of $0.73 [and that]
• revenues rose 7.5% from last year to $2.86 billion, also topping analysts’ view for $2.81 billion.

Looking ahead, EL:

• forecast 2017 EPS between $3.32 and $3.37, which straddles Wall Street’s consensus estimate of $3.33...[and]
• sees full-year revenues rising 4% to 5%, implying totals of around $11.7 to $11.83 billion. That’s in-line with analysts’ view for $11.73 billion in revenues for the year.

The company commented via press release:

“We will continue to seize opportunities in the most promising areas of prestige beauty and expect our sales growth to continue to accelerate in our fourth quarter, capping another strong fiscal year.

In our fiscal fourth quarter, we plan to increase targeted investment spending behind the greatest opportunities to further our momentum into fiscal 2018.

We are confident in our ability to achieve our previously stated fiscal 2017 sales growth goal of 6% to 7% in constant currency, which includes approximately 2% of incremental sales from our recent acquisitions.

We are also reiterating our constant currency earnings per share growth expectation of 8% to 9%, before charges, which reflects $.07 of dilution related to acquisitions.”

Estee Lauder Companies Inc. shares rose $2.20 (+2.51%) in premarket trading Wednesday. Year-to-date, EL has gained 14.83%, versus a 7.28% rise in the benchmark S&P 500 index during the same period.

EL currently has a StockNews.com POWR Rating of B (Buy) and is ranked #12 of 69 stocks in the Fashion & Luxury category.