Herbalife Nutrition Ltd. (NYSE:HLF) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Michael Johnson: 15% of our portfolio is going to be reduced and that’s going to allow us more innovation, the use of resources to put towards innovation. We have a new member and I mentioned it last time of our product development team, and innovation team here the gentleman who brought us Herbalife24, Dr. John Heiss, who’s looking at every piece of our product portfolio right now. We have a couple of major, or should I say, product innovations that I don’t want to tip right now that are going to be released in the near future. We’ll test a few in some marketplaces. This is our new mentality and here is to test it to make sure it works. We have a couple of products in Europe Vital Complete that’s delivering some very early positive numbers to us.

India has a self-contained product line there. They continue to enhance and create new products. We’re looking at our innovation center in Asia, as a huge opportunity for us. I just don’t want to tip the hat on some of these products that are coming, because our distributors don’t know about them yet. We work closely with the distributors to make sure that everything, we’re bringing to the marketplace has a distributor method of operation that it fits in and works closely with their business. I know that’s a little bit of a political answer for you, but that’s the best you’re going to get right now.

Jeff Van Sinderen : Okay. Thanks for that. And thanks for taking my questions.

Michael Johnson: Thanks, Jeff.

Operator: Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of William Reuter with Bank of America. Your line is open.

William Reuter : Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. Firstly, you commented that the benefit of pricing was 13% in the quarter. I know you’ve been hesitant to take additional price increases after the large one last summer. Where are you guys in terms of additional price increases for the remainder of the year?

Alex Amezquita: Yes. Obviously, 13% quarter-over-quarter is a massive number. I think if you look at sort of the performance post that — post the price increases that we predominantly took mid last year, there is some level of demand elasticity and there’s some level of market saturation, particularly in the US and some Western European markets in terms of the ability to continue to take price. And so, while we’re not necessarily made whole from a gross profit margin on all the input supply chain escalations that we’ve seen over the past year and change, there does seem to be a limitation for how much pricing we can continue to pass on to the market. So, I think what you’re going to see from us in 2023 is some level of price increases on a lot lower level than what we executed on in 2022.

And we’re just really going to monitor it closely and see how — on a market-by-market basis, how those price increases are being impacted. But — so overall I would summarize, much more conservative in terms of the amount of price increases, we’re going to be taking and really taking a more prudent view on demand elasticity as we move through 2023.

William Reuter: Okay. Previously you had noted that free cash flow this year should be above 2022. I don’t think I heard an update Alex in your prepared remarks on that. I know your first quarter you said was below kind of historical levels. Where are you on that thought process?