First the good news. Estée Lauder announced this morning that its fiscal first-quarter profit rose 31% to $51.1 million, or 26 cents a share, from $39.1 million, or 20 cents, a year earlier. Sales in the quarter ended Sept. 30 rose 11% to  $1.9 billion from $1.71 billion.

“In spite of a very challenging global macroeconomic environment, we met our sales growth target and exceeded our EPS estimate for the quarter,” said William P. Lauder, chief executive officer. “We achieved our goals on the strength of our brands and the efforts of our employees who demonstrated time and again the value of our products to consumers. Our performance in the period underscored, once more, the importance of our investments in emerging markets as well as our presence in more established international markets. We also continued to benefit from product innovation, multi-channel distribution and consistent brand building investments. Looking forward, we are convinced that these strategies, along with our commitment to strong execution and disciplined spending, will continue to be key drivers of both our top line and bottom line performance.”

However, he warned that in the near term, it is a time of extraordinary uncertainty.

“We believe the global economic challenges will be extensive and ongoing, and we are managing our business with these expectations in mind,” he said. “We remain focused on our core strengths and in directing our resources to the greatest growth opportunities, while vigilantly taking necessary steps to protect our bottom line where we can. We believe that the slowdown in the global economy will impact our overall sales growth for the remainder of the fiscal year, and the unprecedented strengthening of the U.S. dollar against several major currencies will also have a negative impact on our results.”

With this in mind, the company revised its full 2009 fiscal year estimates for sales growth in constant currencies to 3% to 5% and earnings per share to $2.20 to $2.50.