Ulta Beauty on Thursday laid out plans to boost sales and gain market share after a first-quarter sales slowdown.

Comparable sales, a metric that tracks Ulta stores open at least 14 months along with online sales, increased 1.6% year over year, a stark slowdown from the same period a year earlier when Ulta reported comparable sales growth of 9.3%

“We expect growth to accelerate in the second half of the year, to be between 2% and 4% reflecting the impact of our sales-driving initiatives,” finance chief Paula Oyibo said during the company’s earnings call.

Ulta CEO Dave Kimbell in April warned of cooling demand in the beauty category at an investor conference. And while the slowdown was largely anticipated, Kimbell said it hit the company “a bit earlier and bit bigger” than expected.

Kimbell on Thursday acknowledged market share has been challenged in the past quarters, particularly within the prestige beauty category.

“We are not satisfied with our market share trends and we’re taking actions to reinforce our leadership position and accelerate growth,” Kimbell said during the earnings call, adding the company will share further long-term plans at its analyst day in October.

Kimbell outlined five key areas in which the company is planning on taking concrete action: strengthening assortment through 25 new brands including Ulta-exclusives with celebrities like Serena Williams and Bella Hadid; accelerating social relevance through scaling its creator network; enhancing the consumer digital experience; leveraging the loyalty program; and evolving promotional levers.

The company will also expand its partnership with delivery service DoorDash, where it offers same-day delivery from its stores, and lean in on their app adoption. The Ulta app accounted for 57% of e-commerce sales in the quarter, Kimbell said.

Kimbell also announced the company is testing new gamification platforms and later this year will activate new marketing technology that will help guests personalize their shopping experience.

Shares of Ulta gained about 11% in extended trading Thursday.

Here’s how the beauty company performed during the period compared to what Wall Street was anticipating, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:

Ulta reported net income for the quarter ended May 4 of $313.1 million, or $6.47 per share, compared with $347.1 million, or $6.88 per share, a year earlier. 

Net sales rose slightly to $2.73 billion from $2.63 billion a year earlier.

The company lowered its guidance for the fiscal year. Ulta reported that it is now expecting net sales in the range of $11.5 billion to $11.6 billion and comparable sales in the range of 2% to 3%. It had previously guided to full-year net sales of $11.7 billion to $11.8 billion and comparable sales of 4% to 5%.

Ulta also revised its full-year earnings per share guidance to a range of $25.20 to $26, down from its previous guidance of $26.20 to $27.

Ulta Beauty has been a strong performer for retailers as they face a consumer pullback in light of persistently higher costs. Beauty brand e.l.f recently reported its first billion-dollar fiscal year, blowing past Wall Street estimates and sending shares soaring.

Artificial intelligence-powered beauty company Oddity Tech recently told CNBC the industry isn’t seeing so much a slowdown but rather a shift in the business.

“What we do see is an industry that’s transforming. So the consumer is moving online and the consumer is moving to high-efficacy products that really solve their problems,” Oddity finance chief Lindsay Drucker Mann told CNBC.

The Wall Street view of Ulta has been cooling ahead of the company’s earnings report, with analysts at Baird and Canaccord Genuity lowering their price targets in recent days.

“We believe the beauty category is resilient. Despite reduced spending on discretionary items, consumers continue to prioritize beauty products, leading to significant growth in this category,” analysts at Jane Hali & Associates said in a recent note on Ulta, adding that although they view the wellness category as a key strength, they are cautious on the makeup category.

Shares of the company closed at $385.58 per share on Thursday, bringing the company’s market value to about $18.5 billion.

A series of tour cancellations and changes by big-name artists has sparked questions about whether the post-pandemic live music boom could be cooling, as consumer spending fatigue meets elevated ticket prices.

On Friday, Jennifer Lopez announced she was canceling her 2024 tour, citing a desire to spend more time with her family. Meanwhile, the Black Keys announced they were abandoning a stadium tour in favor of a series of shows at smaller venues.

Both tours had recently become the subject of social media fodder, namely screenshots showing empty venues at select tour dates. (NBC News could could not directly verify their authenticity.)

Indeed, some of the evidence of a slowdown is anecdotal. SeatGeek said in an email that the average resale ticket price to attend a summer concert is down to $213 from $257 around this time last year. The company suggested some of the decline could be attributed to the absence of megatours on par with Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” and Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” outings last year.

For artists whose popularity has crescendoed, there appears to be plenty of demand — and high prices. The average resale price for Olivia Rodrigo’s “Guts” tour is $571, and the next-highest is $409 to see Morgan Wallen, according to SeatGeek data first reported by Axios.

Many of those tours are being sold through Ticketmaster and its parent Live Nation. And prior to facing landmark accusations that it is a monopoly, a claim it denies, Live Nation reported its biggest first quarter ever, with $3.8 billion in revenues. Its concerts business alone was up 26% to $2.9 billion, while “estimated fans” globally were up more than 20%, and up 42% in North America.

Yet official government data points to the makings of a return to a more normal pace for live music event sales after a post-pandemic boom. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last month that movie and concert admissions prices climbed just 3.4% year over year through April, the lowest reading since 2021 and the second-consecutive month showing a slowdown.

Dave Clark, editor of Ticket News, which tracks the live entertainment industry, said the period of explosive live music growth following pandemic reopenings may in hindsight be seen as an aberration: People were simply more eager — and more financially able — to go to as many shows as they could after months cooped up indoors.

This year, Clark said, a reckoning may be emerging.

“The days where there was enough demand to sell out arenas at top dollar just isn’t there in this live events economy — outside of people like Taylor Swift who can sell whatever they want wherever they want,” he said.

At a time when many consumers are struggling to pay for basic necessities, he said, “people are seeing some of the prices they’re asking and just saying, ‘Hard pass.’”

Another factor may be a supply issue, Clark added: too many acts trying to tour at once, or too many times. In the pre-streaming era, bands would go on tour as a way of marketing an album. These days, he said, it’s reversed, since the returns on recorded music have shrunk dramatically.

“Now they’re making records to sell the tour,” he said. “That paradigm has a lot to do with it. It’s just a very overloaded market.”

The Black Keys did just release a new album, and its debut single hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart in March.

Still, the rock duo announced it would cancel and reschedule its summer touring plans, switching from arenas to other venues that provide a more “intimate experience,” according to the band. The new dates have not yet been announced.

The Black Keys aren’t the only group that may be falling victim to costly concert fatigue.

Pop-rock band 311 announced it had canceled upcoming European tour dates due to the “rising costs of touring overseas,” which made completing certain portions of the tour “unfeasible.”

Other stars including Pink and Justin Timberlake have also recently canceled specific show dates, while the Jonas Brothers recently postponed their upcoming European tour, though none officially cited financial concerns as reasons for doing so.

“I think with all that competition for fan dollars, it was obviously natural that some artists were going to lose,” said Bill Werde, director of the Syracuse University Bandier Program for Recording and Entertainment Industries.

There are still plenty of large-scale tours planned for this summer that, so far, appear to be unaffected by flagging demand. Hootie & the Blowfish have 48 dates booked this year, while Dave Matthews Band is slated for 34. Other top acts hitting the road include Maroon 5, Zac Brown Band, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kenny Chesney and Chris Stapleton.

But experts say recent economic trends in the live-music industry, especially the type of consolidation the Justice Department is now targeting, have translated into fewer smaller-sized venues.

That’s made it more difficult for a given tour date to make financial sense for the artist, venue and promoter.

“Some shows, they can’t afford to drop prices; they can’t afford to wait to try to sell out the rest of the building,” Clark said.

If there is uncertainty about all stakeholders being able to at least break even, he said, the show might get canceled.

Such realities have collided with a more circumspect concertgoer. Brittney D’Mello, a 23-year-old K-pop fan from New Jersey who works in corporate marketing, posted to X about her frustrations with the current touring landscape.

“The tickets are too expensive,” D’Mello said. “There’s only a SMALL amount of people (10%) that will spend $500+ on vip/floor/premium,” she said. “The rest of us have budgets and won’t spend $100 on nosebleeds,” she said, referring to seats that are typically the farthest away from the stage.

“Everyone is touring this year … and we only have money for 2-3 concerts MAX,” she added.

In a follow-up interview with NBC News, D’Mello said she simply decided to cap her concert budget.

“I will only go see two artists that are my tried-and-true favorite artists,” she said. “But I won’t be casually going to concerts anymore. And after going to concerts twice, I think that’s where I stop.”