Herbalife : croissance à petit prix ?

Attention, cela fait des lustres "qu’on le sait" (déjà des "amis" essayaient de refourguer des sachets de thé Herbalife hors de prix à mes parents il y a plus de vingt ans) et Bill Ackman mène une campagne intensive sur le sujet aux USA depuis quelques années maintenant.

Cependant, pour le moment, la société Herbalife est toujours très active et pèse encore $5 Md en bourse…

Bonjour,

J’avais raté l’info, mais Ackman a lâché l’affaire sur son short d’Herbalife, après plus de 5 années.

PSC 2017 Annual Report a écrit :

While we have been correct in our belief that Herbalife’s business fundamentals would deteriorate as earnings per share, revenue growth, and other measures of business performance weakened substantially since we initiated the investment, we underestimated Herbalife’s ability to access debt capital and use financial engineering which – coupled with Mr . Icahn’s share purchases to materially reduce the company’s free float – has driven share price appreciation. The reduction in free float is best evidenced by the cover page of Herbalife’s recently filed 10-K which reports 87.4 million shares outstanding of which only 22.7 million are held by non-affiliates of the issuer as of June 30, 2017 (it is unclear why the company does not report this calculation as of a more recent date). In light of the large number of shares that are held by index funds which are non - affiliates of the issuer, and the company’s recent announcement of another tender offer, it is not surprising that the shares have continued to increase substantially in price without regard to fundamental value as there is almost no supply of shares for sale from non - affiliates of the company. While we believe that deteriorating business fundamentals and a high valuation are a good recipe for an attractive short sale, technical factors are a critically important additional consideration. While we continue to believe our analysis of Herbalife’s business remains correct, the shares have become a highly risky short sale in light of the extremely limited free float, and as a result, we have exited this investment.

Sylvain