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Herbalife Diet
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Herbalife News Stock Update Form 10-Q for HERBALIFE
3-Nov-2008Herbalife Quarterly Report
Item 2. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations
Overview
Herbalife is a global network marketing company that sells weight management products, nutritional supplements, energy & fitness products and personal care products. We pursue our mission of “changing people’s lives” by providing a financially rewarding business opportunity to distributors and quality products to distributors and their customers who seek a healthy lifestyle. We are one of the largest network marketing companies in the world with net sales of approximately $2.1 billion for the year ended December 31, 2007. As of September 30, 2008, we sold our products in 66 countries through a network of over 1.9 million independent distributors except in China, where we sell our products through retail stores and an employed sales force. We believe the quality of our products and the effectiveness of our distribution network, coupled with geographic expansion, have been the primary reasons for our success throughout our 28-year operating history. Unless otherwise noted, the terms “we,” “our,” “us,” “Company” and “Herbalife” refer to Herbalife Ltd. and its subsidiaries.
Our products are grouped in four principal categories: weight management, targeted nutrition, energy & fitness and Outer Nutrition. Our products are often sold in programs that are comprised of a series of related products designed to simplify weight management and nutrition for consumers and maximize our distributors’ cross-selling opportunities.
Industry-wide factors that affect us and our competitors include the increasing prevalence of obesity and the aging of the worldwide population, which are driving demand for nutrition and wellness-related products and the recruitment and retention of distributors.
The opportunities and challenges upon which we are most focused are retailing of our products, recruitment and retention of distributors, improving distributor productivity, entering new markets, further penetrating existing markets including China, globalizing successful distributor methods of operation such as Nutrition Clubs, introducing new products, developing niche market segments and further investing in our infrastructure.
In late 2007, we changed our geographic regions. This updated regional structure allows us to better support the distributor leadership and enhance synergies within the regions. Under the new geographic regions, we report revenue from:
� North America, which consists of the U.S., Canada and Jamaica;
� Mexico and Central America, which consists of Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Panama and Dominican Republic;
� South America, which includes Brazil;
� EMEA, which consists of Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and
� Asia Pacific, which consists of Asia, New Zealand and Australia.
Historical information presented in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q relating to our geographic regions has been reclassified to conform with our current geographic presentation.
Table of Contents Volume Points by Geographic Region A key non-financial measure we focus on is Volume Points on a Royalty Basis, or Volume Points, which is essentially our weighted unit measure of product sales volume. It is a useful measure for us, as it excludes the impact of foreign currency fluctuations and ignores the differences generated by varying retail pricing across geographic markets. In general, an increase in Volume Points in a particular geographic region or country indicates an increase in local currency net sales.
Number of New Sales Leaders by Geographic Region during the Reporting PeriodAnother key non-financial measure on which we focus is the number of distributors qualified as new sales leaders under our compensation system. Excluding China, distributors qualify for supervisor status based on their Volume Points. The growth in the number of new sales leaders is a general indicator of the level of distributor recruitment, which generally drives net sales in a particular country or geographic region.(1) China sales employees represent the cumulative total employed sales force, both active and inactive, operating under our China marketing plan where we sell our products through retail stores. We will begin an annual re-evaluation process commencing in early 2009 to determine the ongoing active sales employees in China and we anticipate a reduction in this figure following this annual re-evaluation process.
Table of Contents Herbalife weight loss products
