Jump to content

HLF - Herbalife


hyten1

Recommended Posts

Interesting. Ackman has been upping the ante (verbally at least) since the start and it seems we're in the final innings to find out whether HLF will be guilty or exonerated in the public opinion. It gets interesting when you start throwing around words like "Enron" ...

 

Will the event be live streamed tomorrow? I'll definitely be following.

 

Should be streamed at the herballife site he mentioned on CNBC (http://www.herbalifepyramidscheme.com/).

 

One of the articles said that Pershing spent 50 million dollars going undercover for the past two years. They must have a bunch of videos of 'distributors' selling each other products at official meetings to inflate sales on paper and juke their stats, and of company representatives making crazy promises to their members about how much they can make, or explaining to undercover members how things really work, etc. Should be interesting to watch.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 400
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

New York, July 18, 2014 – Pershing Square Capital Management today announced that it will present its investigation of Herbalife Ltd.’s Nutrition Clubs at the AXA Equitable Center on Tuesday, July 22, at 10 AM EDT to be followed by a Q&A session. The presentation will also be simultaneously webcast at www.herbalifepyramidscheme.com and www.factsaboutherbalife.com.

 

Time changed to 9:15am EDT

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One of the articles said that Pershing spent 50 million dollars going undercover for the past two years. They must have a bunch of videos of 'distributors' selling each other products at official meetings to inflate sales on paper and juke their stats..

Distributors selling each other product would be functionally equivalent to a distributor buying product and just sitting on it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting. Ackman has been upping the ante (verbally at least) since the start and it seems we're in the final innings to find out whether HLF will be guilty or exonerated in the public opinion. It gets interesting when you start throwing around words like "Enron" ...

 

Will the event be live streamed tomorrow? I'll definitely be following.

 

Should be streamed at the herballife site he mentioned on CNBC (http://www.herbalifepyramidscheme.com/).

 

One of the articles said that Pershing spent 50 million dollars going undercover for the past two years. They must have a bunch of videos of 'distributors' selling each other products at official meetings to inflate sales on paper and juke their stats, and of company representatives making crazy promises to their members about how much they can make, or explaining to undercover members how things really work, etc. Should be interesting to watch.

 

thats a plausible guess. ackman did hint that the fraud to be revealed is similar to how enron set up fake trading rooms.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Why does he need 2 years and millions to prove an 'obvious' fraud?

???

 

Because everything else has failed so far. And his ego can't take no for an answer, plus sunk cost fallacy.

On the other hand, we're still fighting the war on drugs which is an obvious failure. Convincing the government to do...many things...can take a while.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, Herbalife is just like the fast food franchise world. Most fast-food franchise owners are regular, non-business savvy people who were out of traditional jobs and kind of tight on money, so to make ends meet they figured, hey, I can be self employed, I'll open a McDonald's!

 

It doesn't matter that their particular McDonald's sells burgers for $15 a pop, the money is supposed to come from signing up a lot of other people to be franchise owners anyway. Who cares that the business couldn't work as a standalone restaurant without the chain-letter aspect when you have a multi-level network of other franchises working under you and sending you juicy royalty checks from all the new franchises owners that they're signing up!

 

In fact, I bet many of the people you see in the Pershing Square video are serial franchisers. I suspect many of them have owned Subways, Wendys, and Burger Kings before they jumped into Herbalife. I swear that lady who looks like a cancer survivor has served me a fajitas somewhere!  Serves them right for falling for the publicity targeting them during prime time shows and believing what was drilled into their heads by expert salespeople and true life testimonials from people just like them.

 

I guess my only question is, who here is an Herbalife distributor? There must be many, right? I'm thinking I need to make some extra money to invest, just a few thousands a month, so maybe I should sign up. Can anyone send me a form and show me the ropes?

 

Made my day  :D .

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Trying to get the live stream going but the site has crashed

 

I think he was too good at marketing the event. A zillion people are hitting "reload" at the same time on the site and the servers can't handle it... Hopefully they have a good host that is adding more capacity as we speak.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"They look like consumers because they are." Whoops! Just refuted your own short thesis.

 

Please, you know that's not what she meant in the context. They do consume the stuff, but they don't go to the club because they want a shake, they go to get some form filled or because a family member said they needed their help so their could get their stamp, spending months to 'qualify' to get other trainees sent to their own club later, etc.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, Herbalife is just like the fast food franchise world. Most fast-food franchise owners are regular, non-business savvy people who were out of traditional jobs and kind of tight on money, so to make ends meet they figured, hey, I can be self employed, I'll open a McDonald's!

 

 

 

As someone who looked into opening a McDonalds I'd say this misses the mark a little bit.  They require that the franchisor has a minimum net worth of $750k in liquid non-real estate assets that are available.  Other franchises like Taco Bell require $1-1.5m in personal net worth before the application is considered.  The people who start fast food franchises are not out of work fly by night operators, rather they are already successful business-people.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, Herbalife is just like the fast food franchise world. Most fast-food franchise owners are regular, non-business savvy people who were out of traditional jobs and kind of tight on money, so to make ends meet they figured, hey, I can be self employed, I'll open a McDonald's!

 

 

 

As someone who looked into opening a McDonalds I'd say this misses the mark a little bit.  They require that the franchisor has a minimum net worth of $750k in liquid non-real estate assets that are available.  Other franchises like Taco Bell require $1-1.5m in personal net worth before the application is considered.  The people who start fast food franchises are not out of work fly by night operators, rather they are already successful business-people.

 

Liberty was being sarcastic.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Did he just call HLF CEO Michael Pearson?

 

He corrected himself for 1 of few moments of levity.  "Big lies were told by the Nazis" (and Herbalife), another great quote.  Ackman says Bill Stiritz' company Post hired bullish analyst Tim Ramey after fired by DA Davidson in Jan 2014. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now



×
×
  • Create New...