Charlotte Tilbury profits reach £21m as global sales climb to £539m

Charlotte Tilbury Beauty has reported a profit before tax of £21 million for the year to the end of December, up just under 15 per cent on the year before, as turnover at the make-up and beauty brand rose almost 11 per cent to £539 million.

The company said the growth reflected “consistent” performance across its existing markets alongside further market and channel expansion, notably its launch in Mexico and the debut of the brand on Amazon’s Premium Beauty store in the United States.

The figures are contained in new accounts filed at Companies House, which also show the company paid no dividends during the year and employed 1,012 people at the end of the period, up about 19 per cent on a year earlier.

The company said it maintained its “number one” ranking in the UK among prestige make-up brands for the full year and “continued to drive innovation in the category with successful launches such as the Unreal Skin foundation stick, Exagger-Eyes mascara, and Pillow Talk Big Lip Plumpgasm lip gloss”.

Since launching at Selfridges in 2013, the business has expanded into 57 markets, employs more than 3,000 people globally and sells through more than 5,000 points of distribution worldwide. These include retail counters, department stores, its “Beauty Wonderland” store in Covent Garden and its own website. The company sells more than 500 products across the skincare, colour, complexion and fragrance categories.

In 2020 the Spanish-listed beauty group Puig bought a majority stake in the brand in a deal that valued the business at about £1.2 billion. Charlotte Tilbury is the largest contributor to the make-up division of Puig, which reported record revenues of €5 billion for 2025, with like-for-like growth of 7.8 per cent across the group.

Tilbury, the make-up artist who founded the company, told The Times in a recent interview that her ambition was to build the “biggest make-up brand in the world”, generating revenue of more than £8 billion. Chanel is currently the largest beauty brand, and L’Oréal the biggest group.

The brand is best known for Magic Cream, a moisturiser Tilbury spent years mixing backstage for models and celebrities, and Pillow Talk, which has grown from a single lip liner into one of the beauty industry’s most successful franchises. The company claims more than five Pillow Talk products are sold every minute globally.

Beauty brands have continued to grow through the cost of living squeeze, a pattern often described as the “lipstick effect”, in which consumers forgo bigger purchases such as holidays or designer accessories in favour of smaller, affordable luxuries like high-end cosmetics.

The accounts also note that “significant geopolitical conflict emerged in the Middle East” during the year. The company said that while its financial position “remains unaffected, the company shall continue to monitor the situation closely”.