Company name Herbalife Ltd.
Stock ticker HLF
Live stock price [stckqut]HLF[/stckqut]
P/E compared to competitors Good

MANAGEMENT EXECUTION

Employee productivity Good
Sales growth Good
EPS growth Good
P/E growth Good
EBIT growth Good

ANALYSIS

Confident Investor Rating Good
Target stock price (TWCA growth scenario) $95.25
Target stock price (averages with growth) $101.04
Target stock price (averages with no growth) $49.22
Target stock price (manual assumptions) $84.21

The following company description is from Google Finance: http://www.google.com/finance?q=hlf

Herbalife Ltd. is a global nutrition company. The Company sells weight management, healthy meals and snacks, sports and fitness, energy and targeted nutritional products as well as personal care products. It distributes and sells its products through a network of independent distributors, using the direct selling channel. The Company categorizes its science-based products into four principal groups: weight management, targeted nutrition, energy, sports & fitness and Outer Nutrition. As of December 31, 2012, it sold its products in 88 countries to and through a network of approximately 3.2 million independent distributors. In China, in order to comply with local laws and regulations, it sells its products through, sales representatives, sales officers, independent service providers and in retail stores. On December 31, 2012, the Company acquired a manufacturing facility in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

 

Confident Investor comments: At this time, I think that a Confident Investor can cautiously invest in Herbalife Ltd. as long as the price is correct. Most of the fundamentals of Herbalife Ltd. are good, in fact the company ranks as a Good company, but there are some concerns with the legal problems with the company. For this reason, I am removing the stock from my Watch List.

If you would like to understand how to evaluate companies like I do on this site, please read my book, The Confident Investor. You can review the best companies that I have found (and I probably invest my own money in most of these companies) in my Watch List.

How was this analysis of Herbalife Ltd. calculated?

For owners of my book, “The Confident Investor” I offer the following analysis (you must be logged in to this site as a book owner in order to see the following analysis). If you have registered and cannot see the balance of this article, make sure you are logged in and refresh your browser.
[s2If current_user_can(s2member_level1)]
In order to assist you in using the techniques of this book, the values that I used when calculating the Manual pricing above were:

Stock price at the time of the calculation: $61.63

Growth: 0.18

Current EPS (TTM): $4.56

P/E: 13

Future EPS Calc: $10.43

Future Stock Price Calc: $135.61

Target stock price: $84.2

I hope that this makes you a better investor. [/s2If]

ID-100203460The beginning of the year is when it seems like every financial website puts out its top or worst stocks. In that vein, I offer my 15 recommended stocks for 2014 – or at least the first half of the year. I cannot list the worst stocks, as there are too many of those to list. I can at least list the 15 recommended stocks that will give you a good basis for the first half of 2014.

Many sites do all year lists, but I am only committing to this list for the first 6 months. There is a great reason for this. It is almost impossible to predict the market farther out than 6 month. In fact, it is quite possible for the market to do a massive correction and even this list would be a fallacy. There is always some risk with any investment and you are encouraged to read this site’s disclaimer before acting on this list.

I would expect all of these companies to maintain their status as Good Companies on my Watch List. I would not expect all of them to make a top 15 recommended stocks list at the end of June. Some of them will grow a bit slower than I expect, and a couple of the 15 recommended stocks are probably going to lose money. As Peter Lynch famously said:

“In this business if you’re good, you’re right six times out of ten. You’re never going to be right nine times out of ten.”

By Peter’s standards, I hope to right on this list with 9 of these picks. I don’t expect all 15 recommended stocks to be massive growth stocks in the year. I also think the list is successful if the list of 15 beats the S&P 500 and the Dow30. In July, perhaps I will publish a list for the second half of the year.

If we would go back in time (starting from December 1) and buy the 15 recommended stocks 3 years ago our portfolio would have grown very nicely. These stocks would have appreciated by 73.35% year over year. They would have grown 184.79% over the last three years. These stocks would have beaten the market (as measured by the Dow Jones Industrial Average) for the last three years by 330.57%. In the past year, these stocks would have beaten the market by 212.17%. With that track record, we should expect good results in the next 6 months.

All of the stocks on this list are rated as Good Companies using the method that I describe in my book The Confident Investor.  You can purchase my book wherever books are sold such as AmazonBarnes and Noble, and Books A Million. It is available in e-book formats for NookKindle, and iPad.

The 15 recommended stocks were chosen from Good Companies on my Watch List. This means we already know they are fairly well managed and have a history of solid growth. While all of the stocks on the Watch List are Good Companies, these 15 recommended stocks seem to be the most well setup for aggressive growth in the first half of 2014.

The 15 recommended stocks for the first half of 2014 also performed very well over the past year and the past 3 years. As I have written before, the past is not a perfect indicator of the future, but it is probably the best indicator that we have to use.

I didn’t try overly hard to make this list of 15 recommended stocks to be a balanced portfolio covering multiple industries. I am happy to report that it isn’t a terrible unbalance. The most glaring omission is that it is very light in banking and in consumer technology. I simply could not find a banking stock that was worth the risk compared to other industries. Also, the consumer technology vertical is simply not performing that well right now. I anticipate that trend to continue for the next few months at least.

It might be possible to criticize this list by its heavy reliance on healthcare and retail. That would be fair but, once again, I wasn’t trying to get a perfectly balanced portfolio.

If you want a more balanced portfolio, you may want to consider some of the Honorable Mention stocks at the end of the list. Also, I always maintain that you should have approximately 30% of your portfolio invested in index funds. These funds should be divided by large and small cap funds, an index bond fund, and an index international fund. This would help to balance your portfolio.

You could also look at the Watch List of stocks. These stocks have shown that they are well-run companies. If you are concerned about a balanced portfolio, I suggest that you compliment the 15 recommended stocks with a couple stocks from the Watch List.

The list of 15 recommended stocks for the first half of 2014

  • ABMD
  • ALXN
  • BCPC
  • BLK
  • BWLD
  • CBI
  • CERN
  • GPOR
  • PCLN
  • QCOR
  • SAM
  • TMO
  • TSCO
  • UA
  • ULTA

Read More →

Company name Herbalife Ltd.
Stock ticker HLF
Live stock price [stckqut]HLF[/stckqut]
P/E compared to competitors Good

MANAGEMENT EXECUTION

Employee productivity Poor
Sales growth Good
EPS growth Good
P/E growth Poor
EBIT growth Good

ANALYSIS

Confident Investor Rating Fair
Target stock price (TWCA growth scenario) $73.53
Target stock price (averages with growth) $91.74
Target stock price (averages with no growth) $63.67
Target stock price (manual assumptions) $61.4

The following company description is from Google Finance: http://www.google.com/finance?q=hlf

Herbalife Ltd. is a global network marketing company that sells weight management, nutritional supplements, energy, sports and fitness products and personal care products through a network of approximately 2.7 million independent distributors, except in China, where the Company sells its products through retail stores. The Company is a network marketing company that sells a range of weight management products, nutritional supplements and personal care products. As of December 31, 2011, the Company sold products in 79 countries throughout the world. Herbalife’s products are grouped in four principal categories: weight management, targeted nutrition, energy, sports and fitness and Outer Nutrition, along with literature and promotional items. On December 31, 2012, the Company acquired a manufacturing facility in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

 

Confident Investor comments: At this time, I think that a Confident Investor can cautiously invest in this stock as long as the price is correct. Most of the fundamentals of this company are good but there are some concerns. I am leaving the company on my Watch List as the biggest concern is the slowdown in P/E growth.

If you would like to understand how to evaluate companies like I do on this site, please read my book, The Confident Investor.

Company name Herbalife Ltd.
Stock ticker HLF
Live stock price [stckqut]HLF[/stckqut]
P/E compared to competitors Good

MANAGEMENT EXECUTION

Employee productivity Good
Sales growth Good
EPS growth Good
P/E growth Good
EBIT growth Good

ANALYSIS

Confident Investor Rating Good
Target stock price (TWCA growth scenario) $81.21
Target stock price (averages with growth) $95.15
Target stock price (averages with no growth) $60.96
Target stock price (manual assumptions) $73.98

The following company description is from Google Finance: http://www.google.com/finance?q=hlf

Herbalife Ltd. is a global network marketing company that sells weight management, nutritional supplements, energy, sports and fitness products and personal care products through a network of approximately 2.7 million independent distributors, except in China, where the Company sells its products through retail stores. The Company is a network marketing company that sells a range of weight management products, nutritional supplements and personal care products. As of December 31, 2011, the Company sold products in 79 countries throughout the world. Herbalife’s products are grouped in four principal categories: weight management, targeted nutrition, energy, sports and fitness and Outer Nutrition, along with literature and promotional items. The Company’s generates revenue from its six regions: North America, Mexico, South and Central America; EMEA, which consists of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific (excluding China), and China.

 

Confident Investor comments: At this price and at this time, I think that a Confident Investor can confidently invest in this stock.

 

 

Company name Herbalife Ltd.
Stock ticker HLF
Live stock price [stckqut]HLF[/stckqut]
P/E compared to competitors Good
MANAGEMENT EXECUTION
Employee productivity Good
Sales growth Good
EPS growth Good
P/E growth Fair
EBIT growth Good
ANALYSIS
Confident Investor Rating Good
Target stock price (TWCA growth scenario) $104.89
Target stock price (averages with growth) $116.14
Target stock price (averages with no growth) $68.4
Target stock price (manual assumptions) $90.12

The following company description is from Google Finance: http://www.google.com/finance?q=hlf

Herbalife Ltd. is a global network marketing company that sells weight management, nutritional supplements, energy, sports and fitness products and personal care products through a network of approximately 2.7 million independent distributors, except in China, where the Company sells its products through retail stores. The Company is a network marketing company that sells a range of weight management products, nutritional supplements and personal care products. As of December 31, 2011, the Company sold products in 79 countries throughout the world. Herbalife’s products are grouped in four principal categories: weight management, targeted nutrition, energy, sports and fitness and Outer Nutrition, along with literature and promotional items. The Company generates revenue from its six regions: North America, Mexico, South and Central America; EMEA, which consists of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific (excluding China), and China.

Confident Investor comments: At this price and at this time, I think that a Confident Investor can confidently invest in this stock.