NEW YORK — Fine fragrance, the surprise break-out category that’s helped spur the beauty industry’s growth since the coronavirus pandemic, keeps flexing, the recent spate of suppliers’ financial results shows.

“The continued strength and health of the fine fragrance market is very clear,” said Barclays analyst Lauren Lieberman.

The category is advancing at a more normalized pace than at the peak in recent years, when it registered double-digit gains. This is in line with global economic growth, according to Takasago in an earnings release earlier this month. The company is among the world’s top five fragrance and flavors suppliers, alongside IFF, DSM-Firmenich, Symrise and Givaudan.

“Although competition among industry peers continues to be intense, growth is expected to continue in markets such as China and Southeast Asia, while stable performance is also anticipated in mature markets like Europe and North America,” the Japanese supplier continued.

The fine fragrance category is holding on and is “bearing out the idea that fine fragrance is now a bigger part of more consumers’ daily regimen or habit than it was 10 years ago,” Lieberman said.

“You’ve got younger teenagers, kids are wearing fragrance and care about it in a way that hasn’t been for a really, really long time,” she said. “And they’ll continue to mature, develop and move into more sophisticated scents and so on.”

Fragrance suppliers, which are exposed to industry-wide fluctuations, had varying performances. Their results reflect today’s business, since supply chains are so short.

IFF reported low-single-digit growth in fine fragrance in the second quarter.

“We’d been expecting a low-single-digit decline,” Lieberman said, explaining that was because of bottlenecks and challenges in the Middle East. “We don’t know if the outperformance was because the Middle East was less bad than expected or if it’s because other regions outperformed,” the analyst said.

DSM-Firmenich and Givaudan’s winning strategies have been to balance global customers and local and regional ones when it comes to fine fragrance.

DSM-Firmenich has said it has a 60-40 split of global versus local today, but that its target is to reach 50-50 by increasing innovation investment with regional customers. The Dutch-Swiss group’s growth for its fine fragrance division comes from new product activity and high win rates versus its other divisions, where customers are asking to reengineer their products due to inflation.

In the first half, DSM-Firmenich’s fine fragrance business posted a double-digit like-for-like sales increase.

By comparison, Givaudan’s fine fragrance sales in the first half advanced 7.3 percent on a like-for-like basis versus high prior-year comparable growth of 18 percent like-for-like.

Symrise was also up against a high on-year comparison. Its fine fragrance activity registered a midsingle-digit decline in the second quarter, but the company noted continuing high demand and project vitality.

None of the companies provided actual revenue figures for their fine fragrance sales.

Deutsche Bank managing director Virginie Boucher-Ferte considered Symrise’s overall financial update to be solid.

“As always there are some positive and negative moving parts but at this stage the company expects the second-quarter run rate to continue into second half, which well underpins the midpoint of the guidance [3 percent],” she wrote in a note.

Takasago did not break out its fine fragrance results but said in its first quarter of fiscal year 2026-27, ended June 30, fine fragrances sales from its French subsidiary performed well. They helped spur the 14.3 percent overall sales gains to 65.81 billion yen, or $413.6 million, posted in the period.