USANA Health Sciences, Inc.

Hello and welcome to USANA Health Sciences third quarter earnings call. My name is Sarah and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note this conference is being recorded and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero and you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host, Andrew Masuda, to begin today's conference. Thank you.

Thank you and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us to review our third quarter results. Today's conference call is being broadcast live via webcast and can be accessed directly from our website at ir.usana.com. Shortly following the call, a replay will be available on our website. As a reminder, during the course of this conference call, management will make forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of our company. Those statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ, perhaps materially, from the results projected in such forward-looking statements. Examples of these statements include those regarding our strategies and outlook for fiscal year 2022, as well as uncertainty related to the magnitude, scope, and duration of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic to our business operations and financial results. We caution you that these statements should be considered in conjunction with disclosures, including specific risk factors and financial data contained in our most recent filings with the SEC. I'm joined by our CEO and Chairman of the Board, Kevin Guest, our President, Jim Brown, our Chief Financial Officer, Doug Hecking, as well as other executives. Yesterday, after market closed, we announced our third quarter results and posted our management commentary document on the company's website. We'll now hear brief remarks from Kevin before opening the call for questions.

Thank you, Andrew, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us. We reported yesterday that our third quarter operating results were... challenging than anticipated operating environment. COVID-related disruptions and increasing inflationary pressure on consumers were the primary factors that negatively affected our sales momentum and active customer accounts in many of our markets. As we look ahead, we anticipate continued COVID-related inflationary and economic challenges in many of our markets, which is reflected in our adjusted fiscal 2022 outlook. Despite the challenging environment, USADA remains a very healthy business. We generated $29 million U.S. of operating cash flow in the third quarter. We held a successful 30th anniversary convention in Salt Lake City and made meaningful progress to enhance our customer online shopping experience. We have the means, ability, and determination to put USADA back on a growth trajectory towards the Full Monty. We are taking action to implement several short-term initiatives to generate momentum in our business. These initiatives include new and modified incentives in various markets and regions and increase in targeted and relevant communications between our management team and associate leaders and accelerating our return to in-person meetings and events in markets where possible. We must always remember that we are in the people business, and the opportunity to build connectivity with our customers after several years of disruption will be invaluable to creating engagement and excitement in our business. Although we are committed to addressing the short-term challenges we are currently facing, the long-term health and growth of USANA remains our primary focus, and I remain confident that the successful execution of our strategic initiatives will position USANA to return to sustainable long-term growth. With that, I'll now ask the operator to please open the lines for questions.

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question or make a contribution on today's call, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star 2. Please ensure your lines are unmuted locally as you will be advised when to ask your questions. The first question comes from the line of Linda Bolton-Weiser from D8 Davidson. Please go ahead.

Yes. Hi. How are you?

We're doing great. Thank you.

First of all, I guess actually mainland China, the performance was actually a little better than what we had projected, and it was like the other parts of China. I'm sorry, the other parts of Asia that were kind of very weak versus our projection. Can you kind of just touch on and give us a little more color on the other parts of Asia, Southeast Asia, et cetera, and what's going on there?

Yeah, Linda, this is Doug. We had a few things going on. I think probably the largest thing is, you know, in specific our Southeast Asia region. has relied much more on in-person type activity than what we've seen in the other markets. And so kind of this prolonged environment with COVID and economics and inflationary pressures impacted that region. We also had comps really sequentially from what we did in the second quarter. We had a pretty large promotion we ran in the second quarter that we did not do in the third. And we had some bleed on kind of momentum in the third quarter last year. that we didn't have this year from a promotion they ran in the second quarter. And that's, you know, probably the leading things that we've seen in the Southeast Asian market. And some of the challenges were really highlighted by Malaysia and Philippines, which are both great markets. But it's definitely been a challenging environment. We're starting to see some stabilization in those regions as well.

Okay. And just as a follow on, just to go back to China, you know, again, it wasn't as bad as kind of what we had projected. You know, I know it's hard to kind of foresee, but do you actually think in China that the constant currency sales growth can be up possibly in the fourth quarter or still down, you think, in China? Yeah.

You know, and Kevin, you jump in here. I think we're still fighting a pretty tough battle. I think the environment in China right now is, you know, and I think you've seen in the number of some of the peer companies out there, it's been very tough. And I think we've fared fairly well, even though China is a much bigger part of our sales portfolio than what we see with our peer companies. But, you know, the zero COVID policy and just the limitations with being able to go back and do in-person activities, we can do them, but it's limited. And sometimes based on what's happening in the locale, we have to abandon some of the plans that we have. And so we're definitely adapting, and we're seeing a lot of, you know, new things, investments we're making in the China market that will go back and give us some longer-term traction. But I think short-term, I think you'll continue to see us, you know, continue to battle and fight. But I think you'll see probably similar numbers in the short-term.

Okay. And then... Just can you comment on like what you're seeing on the cost side, the various input costs? Are things sort of getting a little bit better or stabilizing or kind of what are you seeing on that side?

Yeah, when you look at it, I would characterize it as stabilizing at this point in time. We haven't seen costs come down when I'm talking about raw materials. You know, definitely in the Salt Lake City where we produce the majority of our products, we do produce in China as well. But, you know, some of the challenges that we have with logistics are getting better, but the cost of that is still relatively high. And, you know, our expectation is that it will remain high probably through the midway through 2023. In China itself, the costs haven't been as high as they have for, you know, the U.S., so that's a good thing as well. We really haven't seen anything come down at this point in time, and we're really not expecting it to.

Yeah, Linda, maybe another element to go back and just consider, you know, I think the group has done a good job in the environment, but exchange rates right now, we produce out of the U.S. for every market with the exception of mainland China. And when you do that and you see the strength of the dollar, that creates some gross margin compression as well. And we also see that in our SG&A line from an operating leverage perspective.

Okay. Thanks. And then, sorry if I didn't see it in the financials, but what was the inventory at the end of the quarter, and was it down again sequentially?

Yeah, it was. We're at $73 million total. We had a reclassification that we're making in the third quarter to put part of that in long-term, but that includes both short-term and long-term inventory, and it continues to be managed. We were we were obviously pretty aggressive at Jim's direction to go back and make sure that we're not disrupting the customer experience and making sure we had inventory to sell. And, you know, for a while there, it was pretty uncertain, so we made some strategic plays to go back and build up inventory, and we're at a point now where we've tried to locate more inventory in markets as a buffer, and we're at the point now where we're starting to go back and really kind of right-size that to our current run rate and revenue.

Okay. And then just One final one for me. I know it's really hard to gauge this, but I think that investors are kind of seeking some visibility on when you might return to organic or constant currency sales growth because you are posting declines against double-digit declines. So it's a little bit hard. Even when comparisons are easy, it's hard to gauge when you might start growing. Do you think... second quarter, 23, or do you think not until the second half of 2023 might we see that constant currency growth?

Yeah, Linda, we're right in our planning cycle right now. I think we are seeing some stabilization, I think particularly in customer accounts. But I would expect that we'll comment on that a little bit more detail at the February call. We're still kind of sorting that out and kind of getting, you know, information from the markets and kind of pressure testing as we go. So I think I'd probably defer until February. We'll give you some visibility at that point.

Okay, thank you so much.

Thanks, Linda. Thank you.

We currently have no questions coming through, so as a final reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1. There are no further questions. I will now hand you back to your host.

Thank you for your questions and for your participation on today's conference call. If you have any remaining questions, please feel free to contact Investor Relations at 801-954-7210.

Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect your line.