(AOF) - L'Oréal managed to regain its footing on Monday after Friday's sharp drop, buoyed by reassuring analyst commentary that sought to put the French cosmetics giant's underwhelming fourth quarter 2025 performance into perspective.

The stock rebounded by 3.3%, posting the strongest gain on the CAC 40 index and ranking among the top risers on the pan-European STOXX Europe 600.

With this rally, the share erased much of the nearly 5% loss suffered on Friday, following the release of "only" 6% organic growth in the fourth quarter. Analysts had expected 6.3%, while the unofficial consensus was anticipating 7%.

This disappointment was mainly due to a slowdown in luxury product growth (Lancôme, Yves Saint Laurent, Aesop, and Maison Margiela) and persistent weakness in its Chinese operations, where the environment remains challenging despite slight improvement.

"The debate is mainly focused on the pace of recovery in China, where the fourth quarter disappointed but the first quarter appears to have gotten off to a good start," Deutsche Bank analysts noted this morning.

"We'll likely need to wait for the first-quarter results of the major luxury players to truly understand how the situation will evolve," the German bank added.

Beyond the disappointing fourth-quarter results, many investors are choosing to focus on encouraging signs that suggest a swift improvement in the beauty specialist's performance, and expect a re-rating of the stock as these temporary headwinds abate.

While UBS teams lamented a "missed opportunity" with the latest results, they also assured that the "dust should quickly settle."

"Rather than clearly outperforming expectations and convincingly demonstrating a step change with accelerating growth, L'Oréal was caught out by one-off unfavorable factors (notably unexpected destocking in Asia's travel retail sector and a mismatch between shipments and final sales in the United States) that overshadowed the company's underlying progress," commented Guillaume Delmas, value specialist at UBS, this morning.

According to Delmas, the market should soon put aside the disappointing results of the past two quarters and focus more on the company's many strengths.

In its research note, UBS highlighted, among other things, (1) the group's broad-based improvement in like-for-like growth, (2) a rebound in its main growth drivers, (3) a strong start to the year validating the group's ambition to accelerate growth in 2026, (4) the prospect of numerous acquisitions offering synergy opportunities, (5) its status as a pioneer in AI among major beauty stocks, positioning it as a clear winner in the ongoing technological revolution, and (6) an attractive valuation.

While the stock currently trades at a 2026 P/E of 27.5x, a 35% premium to the broader European consumer staples sector (20x), UBS points out that this is still well below its ten-year average of 30.5x.

With today's gain, the share is now up 3.3% year-to-date, compared to a 2.2% rise for the CAC 40.

Over the past 12 months, it has gained 11.5%, compared to a 1.9% increase for the CAC.

Technically, L'Oréal is poised to fill its "pullback" below the 385 euro threshold that followed Thursday evening's results release, and remains comfortably above its 100- and 200-day moving averages, at 373.5 and 376 euros respectively, signaling continued strong market momentum.