M. Truman Hunt
Analyst · Merrill Lynch
Thanks, Scott, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on today's call. As you saw in our earnings release this morning, our third quarter revenue came in at $639 million, the top end of our guidance. And earnings per share were $1.12, which was ahead of our expectations. Overall, I would characterize our third quarter performance as solid against our expectations. As you know, we're going up against difficult comparisons in the back half of 2014 as we lap the launch of our TR90 Weight Management System last year. In the third quarter of last year, I would remind you that we generated about $203 million of revenue from the limited time launch of TR90. And in the fourth quarter of last year, we generated $350 million of TR90 revenue. We're also facing some currency headwind, which cost us about 3% of sales or about $23 million versus last year's third quarter. Those factors as well as the disruption of our -- to our China business earlier this year contributed to the year-over-year revenue decline as well as to the number of active and sales leader accounts that we reported this morning. Given these factors, it makes sense to look at our business on a sequential basis to understand how the business is trending. While our sights are set squarely on returning to growth in 2015, we guided this morning to fourth quarter revenue of $590 million to $610 million. This guidance will likely seem conservative to some, so I'd like to deconstruct our revenue base just a bit to help you better understand the trends in the business. As you know, our revenue is impacted by the volume we generate in our product launch process. Our product launches are typically very good business drivers as our sales force builds enthusiasm and interest among sales organizations as well as consumers. Our revenue line in each quarter of 2014 includes LTO volume. So in the first quarter of 2014, we generated about $33 million of LTO sales, then in the second quarter, $76 million in LTO sales, and in the third quarter, $81 million of LTO sales. In the fourth quarter of 2014, there will be only about $10 million to $15 million in LTO sales volume for new products. So while we have a number of typical seasonal promotions in virtually every market around the world in the fourth quarter, there's no significant LTO volume planned to offset the LTO volume generated over the past several quarters. Consequently, what we'll see in the fourth quarter this year is reflective of what we would characterize as our core business level. And if we take out the level of LTO volume from our top line over the first 3 quarters and then look at Q4 guidance sequentially, what you'll see is stabilization of the core revenue level and even slight sequential improvement. This is obviously what we're hoping for and what we're working hard to achieve. The next 2 quarters are a transition time for us. We're encouraged with signs of growth in the early sales leader pipeline in China, but we're still ramping up our marketing and promotional activities there. In August, we started to hold larger sales meetings again and we're seeing the number of participants in those sales meetings in China increase on a monthly basis, which is also encouraging to us, obviously. And while we also remain hopeful about the prospects for direct selling generally in China, the industry continues to grow in size and in influence. After a year with some unforeseen challenges, we're reestablishing trust with regulators and taking this time to train our sales leaders on promoting the business in a healthy, sustainable fashion. Fortunately, nothing we've experienced in China this past year alters our optimism for the potential of China in the future. Let me make just a few brief comments on other markets as well. The Americas is doing well on a local currency basis, with strong growth particularly in Latin America. This has been a long-term project for us and frankly, our success there is being driven by a strong group of sales leaders who have reached critical mass in size and who are just making it happen there. Obviously, the devaluation of currency in Venezuela is a big issue for us as well as anyone else doing business in that market. South Korea continues to do well. Japan trends improved in the quarter on a sequential basis, and we expect Q4 will be stronger sequentially in Japan. And Southeast Asia remained steady with strength in markets like Indonesia and Thailand. The EMEA region has been soft this year, but the decline there is largely related to business dynamics in Eastern Europe. So looking forward to next year, we recently held a global sales leader focus group to review with our top sales leaders our product launch plans for 2015 and 2016. Our Pharmanex and Nu Skin initiatives are meeting with healthy levels of enthusiasm. In both categories, we'll introduce products that represent the most time and resources we've ever invested in new product initiatives. On the Skin Care front, we'll introduce a device that makes a skin care regimen as customizable as possible. And we think that consumers will like what they see. When we survey consumers to ask what each individual would like in a skin care regimen, our research reveals that skin care marketers would literally have to put hundreds of alternatives on the shelves to satisfy what people want on an individual basis. No skin care company in the world has the ability to meet this need until now. We believe our ageLOC Me skin care system has the potential to revolutionize the skin care world, as consumers will finally be able to select what they're after in a system and have a device that makes compliance with the skin care regimen very simple. On the Nutrition front, our new product which we've referred to for many years as the mother of all supplements and is now codenamed "YOUTHSPAN," incorporates the best science in anti-aging developed over the past 30 years. It will become the core product in our daily nutrition regimen. And as you know, our LifePak product has long been a top-seller for us, so we believe that "YOUTHSPAN" has great potential. Now Ritch is going to speak to our improving financial profile in a moment, but we were pleased to get our refinancing completed recently. Our new debt structure is long-term in nature and eliminates the covenant restrictions that have limited the extent to which we can use capital to repurchase shares. Since June, we have been generating positive levels of operating cash flow on a monthly basis, exclusive of a tax payment made during the third quarter. And we expect to see positive transitions in cash and inventory levels going forward. So overall, we view this quarter and the next as an important transition period for Nu Skin Enterprises. Fundamentally, the business is solid, and we continue to prepare ourselves for what we believe will be a return to growth in 2015. Now we've had a couple of questions this morning on a news story of a potential SEC inquiry, so we want to provide a response to this issue to the extent that we can. As we've previously discussed on many occasions throughout the year, the company's Audit Committee initiated a voluntary review of our China business last January in response to media and government inquiries there. At the SEC's request, we have communicated with the SEC a few times during the course of the year on a voluntary basis to report on the status of this internal review. To our knowledge, the SEC has not opened a formal investigation nor made any request for the production of documents. As always, we're committed to maintaining an open and a transparent dialogue with the SEC and with all regulatory agencies, both here and abroad. We look forward to sharing our outlook and optimism for the next year at our upcoming Annual Investor Day conference here in Provo on December 12. And with that, I'll turn the microphone over to Ritch.