Berenberg Highlights L'Oréal's Q3 Beat, Early Signs of AI 'Dominance'; Price Target Up

03:52 AM EDT, 10/26/2026 (MT Newswires) -- Berenberg raised its price target on L'Oréal (OR.PA), highlighting the French cosmetics and personal care products company's better-than-expected third-quarter results and early signs of competitive "dominance" in large language model beauty discovery. "The margin by which L'Oréal outpaced expectations in its Q326 results boosts our confidence that the bellwether's leadership in beauty is becoming entrenched, as we argued in our Prompting a renaissance: Big Beauty is back report," analysts said Monday. "Beyond quarter-specific tailwinds, including a strong sun season, we attribute L'Oréal's strong performance to its investments in innovation across its entire portfolio and, increasingly, the bellwether's leadership with regard to LLMs." The research firm noted L'Oréal's like-for-like sales increase of 7.7% in the third quarter, topping consensus estimates by 220 basis points, with volume gains driving over half of that expansion. Analysts also highlighted management's expectations of 5% beauty market growth and continued "meaningful outperformance," alongside expected "slight moderation" from the third quarter amid "favorable" one-offs. Against this backdrop, Berenberg raised its sales, EBIT and EPS forecasts for full-year 2026 through 2028 to reflect the latest company commentary and currency movements. The research firm also lifted its price target to 480 euros from 447 euros, while reiterating its buy rating. Analysts view L'Oreal's upcoming artificial intelligence-focused capital markets day scheduled for Nov. 30 as an "important" catalyst for the stock.