Nu Skin Enterprises, Inc. (NYSE:NUS) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript May 8, 2024
Nu Skin Enterprises, Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).
Operator: Good day. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q1 2024 Nu Skin Enterprise Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers’ presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Scott Pond, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Scott Pond: Thanks, Michelle, and good afternoon, everyone. Today on the call with me are Ryan Napierski, President and CEO; and James Thomas, CFO. On today’s call, comments will be made that include some forward-looking statements. These statements involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from those discussed or anticipated. Please refer to today’s earnings release and our SEC filings for a complete discussion of these risks. Also during the call, certain financial numbers may be discussed that differ from comparable numbers obtained in our financial statements. We believe these non-GAAP numbers assist in comparing period-to-period results in a more consistent manner. Please refer to our investor website for any required reconciliation of non-GAAP numbers. And now I’d like to turn the call over to Ryan.
Ryan Napierski: Thanks, Scott. Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. Having just returned from our top sales leader, alignment and activation, all in event in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, I’m eager to provide an update on the state of our business as we enter our 40-year anniversary, pursuing our mission of being a global force for good by empowering people to look, fill and live better lives. I’ll provide a performance summary for Q1 as well as the progress update on our ongoing enterprise transformation vision, strategy and plans. Our results for the first quarter were in line with guidance. At a high level, our business is on track with established expectations, and we are maintaining our full year outlook. Revenue for the quarter was in the middle of our guidance range despite experiencing more FX pressure than we had anticipated.
We were also pleased with our progress on expense reduction initiatives, which helped us deliver first quarter non-GAAP earnings per share at the high end of our range. Our Rhyz business delivered another strong quarter with revenues up 57% to more than $62 million, led by both our Mavely technology platform and Wasatch manufacturing business. The revenue contribution from Rhyz accounted for approximately 15% of total enterprise revenue in the first quarter, and we continue to expect this segment to account for 20% to 25% of our overall mix by 2025. Looking at the performance of our core Nu Skin business, our new product innovations delivered solid results. Ageloc, Wellspa IO and RenewspA IO, the holistic wellness and beauty devices we launched recently, along with Ageloc Trme, our personalized weight management system that also launched in 2023 contributed approximately $42 million to our Q1 revenue.
Europe and Africa, there was a very favorable response to Trme during Q1. There were also positive trends in a handful of our Southeast Asia Pacific markets, and we were encouraged by continued improvements in our sales leader trend in Mainland China despite a generally tepid macroeconomic climate. In other regions, we continue to battle macroeconomic challenges, including heavy inflationary pressures on consumer spending for premium goods, which, together with our aggressive price increases from a year ago have hampered our customer and affiliate acquisition efforts. In the Americas region, our subscription business in North America continues to be pressured by these factors, and we’re making some adjustments to our model in Latin America to counter macro forces, particularly in Argentina.
In South Korea, consumer sentiment remains negative due to the housing market crisis, making it difficult to grow with customers and build the channel. Consumer sentiment is also a factor in Japan in addition to significant FX pressure on our results. So to combat these external factors, we are placing more emphasis on product innovation in the affordable luxury space, and we will be introducing several new products at our upcoming West and East live sales conferences in Q3, our first multimarket in-person events since COVID. Despite these headwinds, we remain committed to our long-term enterprise vision of transforming our core Nu Skin business while building out Rhyz in our long-term beauty, wellness and lifestyle ecosystem. As I mentioned earlier, we just returned from our meetings with our top leaders where there was a palpable level of energy and excitement about the future.
We introduced our next major product innovation, Mind 360 [ph] a new division targeted at the rapidly growing $10 billion cognitive health market. Mind 360 takes a holistic approach to addressing the interrelated factors of stress, sleep and cognitive performance that are impacting the well-being of consumers in today’s busy world. We’re excited to preview Mind 360 at our upcoming live events in Q3 with planned introductions of Mind 360 to follow towards the end of the year and into 2025. Channel activation within our core Nu Skin business is a top priority for us, and we’re pleased to announce the promotion of Justin Keisel as our new President of Global Sales. Justin has been leading the work to expand our affiliate model across the Americas over the past several years.
He has extensive sales leadership experience, both at Nu Skin and in prior roles and has demonstrated his commitment to our leaders success. Justin is spearheading our efforts to retool our entire global sales organization and bring a much more rigorous lens to the sales performance management and channel activation. To this end, we recently launched a new series of incentives, including a new customer acquisition and leadership performance program to reenergize the field. We anticipate these new initiatives to take root through the remainder of this year. Also, let me quickly give an update on last quarter’s announcement of our intent to enter India, one of the fastest-growing direct selling markets in the world. We are taking a very new approach to this high potential emerging market that will enable us to reach a much wider array of customers and entrepreneurs.
Our product offering, business model and operational footprint will be synchronized to enable broader market – mid-market appeal. We are just beginning to activate our channel towards a targeted market opening in 2025 with a digital-first approach that is more agile and will enable us to scale more quickly throughout the market. We see India and our emerging market business model as a gateway to many new markets in the future and anticipate these learnings will help us delve deeper in the second and third-tier markets within Latin America, Southeast Asia and China. Growing out rise in our Rhyz and our Rhyz business is a critical element of our overall enterprise vision as we seek to build out the world’s leading beauty, wellness and lifestyle ecosystem.
Over the past several years, we’ve constructed essential infrastructure consisting of manufacturing, technology and operations to support Nu Skin’s core business while enabling other brands to grow. We are now applying this ecosystem to BeautyBio to enable it to scale and see additional opportunities to extend our comprehensive suite of services, spanning product R&D, production, packaging, cutting-edge technology and logistics to the Indybeauty [ph] and wellness industry for influencers and creators. We see great potential for this influencer incubator over the mid to long term, and we are well positioned to capitalize on these opportunities as we lean into the disruption of the beauty and wellness industry due to social influencers and Indy brands.
We are utilizing our capital to invest in additional manufacturing, services, capabilities and opportunities to enable future growth. So in summary, first quarter results were in line with guidance, and we are maintaining our 2024 outlook. From a top line perspective, we are acutely focused on channel activation with new incentives and continue to lean into our product strategy, including the upcoming launch of Mind 360 as well as affordable luxury. We also continue to invest in our Rhyz business to accelerate growth and further transform our enterprise to leverage our competitive advantages within the beauty, wellness and lifestyle industries. Expense prudence remains a critical focus in 2024. And while we made significant progress on these initiatives during the first quarter, there are still opportunities to drive further efficiency, including our SKU optimization plan to eliminate 25% to 30% of our SKUs by the end of 2025.
Despite the challenging conditions in many of our markets in the near to midterm, we remain focused on executing our long-term vision of becoming the world’s leading integrated beauty and wellness ecosystem. And with that, I’ll turn the call over to James to cover the first quarter results in more detail along with our guidance. James?
James Thomas: Thank you, Ryan, and thanks to all of you for joining today. I’ll provide a brief Q1 update and then speak to Q2 and 2024 guidance. For additional details, please visit our Investor Relations website. For the first quarter, we posted revenue of $417.3 million, which was at the midpoint of our previous guidance range and included a negative foreign currency impact of 3.8% or $18.2 million, which created more pressure from our initial guidance. Reported earnings landed near the top end of our guidance range at negative $0.01 or $0.09, excluding restructuring charges. Our gross margin was 70.5% compared to 72.3% in the prior year quarter. Gross margin for the Nu Skin core business improved 50 basis points to 76.9% compared to 76.4% in the prior year quarter due to our SKU rationalization initiatives and targeted promotion mix.
Selling expense as a percentage of revenue decreased to 36.8% and compared to 39.1% in the prior year quarter. For the Nu Skin core business, selling expense was 41.7%, flat with the prior year. The lower overall gross margin and selling expense is due in growth due to growth in our Rhyz segment, which now accounts for 15% of our business. General and administrative expense declined $9.3 million year-over-year and as a percentage of revenue, was 29.9% compared to 27.8%. The increased percentage can be attributed to lower quarterly revenue levels. As previously discussed, we’ve been strategically evaluating our Nu Skin core business and better aligning our operating costs to be in line with revenue. In the first quarter, we incurred an additional $7.1 million restructuring charge, and we will continue our cost efficiency plan through next quarter with an anticipated $3 million to $8 million of restructuring charges.
We continue to expect this cost efficiency plan to deliver annual savings of between $40 million and $65 million before taxes. We will continue to seek business efficiencies in all areas and believe these actions will help us maximize cash flows, focus on improved margins and enhanced earnings per share going forward. Our operating margin for the quarter was 2.1% or 3.8% excluding restructuring charges compared to 3.3% or 5.4%, excluding restructuring charges in the prior year. Our interest expense was $7.3 million for the quarter compared to $4.9 million in the prior year. The other income expense line reflects a $0.4 million expense compared to a $3.4 million gain in the prior year quarter. In the first quarter, our cash flow from operations rose to a positive $3.3 million, driven by a concentrated effort on inventory management.
In contrast with the $22.1 million cash outflow in the same period last year. Cash from operations is typically the lowest in the first quarter due to lower revenue levels in what is seasonally our slowest quarter. We paid $3 million in dividends and paid down our outstanding debt, $20 million in the quarter. We did not repurchase any stock and have $162.4 million remaining on the current authorization. Our tax rate for the quarter was 148.4% or 48.5% excluding restructuring charges compared to 22%. For the second quarter, we anticipate an elevated tax rate in the range of 45% to 55% and anticipate a projected 2024 annual tax rate of 25% to 35%. This annual rate reflects an anticipated higher global effective tax rate, primarily due to the expected geographical mix of earnings during the year and the rate impact from our stock awards in Q1.
Shifting focus now to guidance. In light of the continued economic pressures, challenges associated with our transforming our business and increased volatility in foreign exchange rates, we are reiterating 2024 revenue in the $1.73 billion to $1.87 billion range. We anticipate earnings per share of $0.77 to $1.16 or adjusted earnings of $0.95 to $1.35. Our guidance now assumes an increased foreign currency headwind of approximately 2% to 3%. We are projecting second quarter revenue of $420 million to $455 million, assuming a foreign currency headwind of approximately 3% to 4% with reported earnings per share of $0.01 to $0.10 or $0.10 to $0.20, excluding restructuring charges. And with that, operator, we’ll now open the call up for questions.
Operator: Thank you [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Chasen Bender with Citi. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
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