5 Largest Weight Loss Companies

2. Herbalife Nutrition Ltd. (NYSE:HLF)

Market Capitalization: $1.5 Billion

Herbalife Nutrition Ltd. (NYSE:HLF), also called Herbalife, is a US-based company that develops and sells dietary supplements all over the world. It was founded in 1980 by Mark R. Hughes has around 9,900 employees worldwide. It has operations in 95 countries through a network of 4.5 million independent distributors and members. The company has its own Herbalife Nutrition Institute, where research and development takes place through a specialized team of leading experts from all over the world. The company also supports clinical research at major universities for achieving scientific advances in weight products. The company has reported annual revenues of more than $5 billion.  

At the end of the third quarter of 2022, 24 hedge funds in the database of Insider Monkey held stakes worth $852 Million in Herbalife Nutrition Ltd. (NYSE:HLF), compared to 28 in the preceding quarter worth $893 million. 

Among the hedge funds being tracked by Insider Monkey, California-based investment firm Route One Investment Company is a leading shareholder in Herbalife Nutrition Ltd. (NYSE:HLF) with 10.8 million shares worth more than $215 million. 

In its Q3 2021 investor letter, Bronte Capital, an asset management firm, highlighted a few stocks and Herbalife Nutrition Ltd. (NYSE:HLF) was one of them. Here is what the fund said:

“Herbalife Nutrition Ltd. (NYSE:HLF) is – as we have discussed many times before – a multi-level marketing scheme selling weight-loss shakes. The idea is simple. If I replaced six meals a week with low-calorie protein shakes and I walked an extra 15km a week I would quickly lose 15-20kgs. It would be good for me. It is also well-nigh impossible to do.

One solution is to hire a personal trainer (usually of the opposite sex) and have them nag you. You will do tough stuff for an attractive member of the opposite sex. More realistically you could just have your friends nag you. And that is why this works so well as a multi-level marketing scheme. The person who sells you the shakes has an incentive to keep you on the diet.

We have looked at many distributors and we see a weight-loss program – implemented for (literally) millions of people – which works about as well as any weight-loss health program that ever existed. That still means it fails most of the time – but it works enough that we can be proud of owning this stock and the health benefits it provides. Herbalife, it turns out, grew well during COVID. This was initially a surprise to us – as we thought Herbalife depended on the personal touch to make the sale. But, instead, weight loss and associated social clubs moved online – and – in many cases were the main social outlet the customers had.”