Competition

Competitors describe Herbalife Ltd.'s market in their own filings and calls. These verified passages and visual pages show where their strategies meet, using source documents preserved in Sources.

Nu Skin Enterprises, Inc. (NUS)

The closest structural analogue: a global direct-selling company built on independent sales leaders, a premium nutrition and personal-care portfolio, heavy Asia and Mainland China exposure, and a multi-year revenue decline of similar shape. Herbalife names Nu Skin as a direct-selling competitor in its own 10-K, and Nu Skin names Herbalife back.

Nu Skin's 10-K competition discussion puts Herbalife in the three-company set of leading global direct sellers it competes against, and frames the contest as one for sales force and consumers rather than for shelf space.

Leading global direct selling companies include Amway, Natura & Co and Herbalife. We also compete with local direct selling companies in the markets in which we operate. We compete with these companies to attract and retain our sales force and consumers based on the strength of our product offerings, sales compensation, multiple business opportunities, management and international operations.

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Nu Skin's own sizing of the nutritional supplements market Herbalife sells into, paired with a Euromonitor-sourced claim to be the world's number one beauty device systems brand and a scan-volume figure it presents as a data moat. Peer-supplied figures, presented as management's framing.

Ryan Napierski — President and CEO: The total addressable market for nutritional supplements reached nearly $500 billion in 2024 and is expected to grow to over $700 billion by 2030 with very little ability to know whether these supplements actually work. Nu Skin is already regarded as the world's #1 beauty device systems brand according to Euromonitor, which is becoming an even greater strategic advantage within the beauty and wellness industries. Additionally, we hold more than 40 years of science-backed research and development in this space and more than 20 years of intelligent wellness research contained in our biophotonics scanner, including insights and trends from the aggregate of 21 million scans for more than 10 million people across more than 50 countries around the world.

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Asked how aggressively Nu Skin is pushing into India, management sizes the Indian direct-selling industry and describes a deliberate year-long pre-market entry before formal launch — a peer's read on a market Herbalife already operates in.

Ryan Napierski — President and CEO: The direct selling industry in India is still relatively small — it's just over USD 3.5 billion — so it pales in comparison to some other markets, but it's also the fastest growing. We understand there's a lot of potential there. We also understand there's a lot of room for growth and development in that market before it will see an explosive level of growth, at least for our business model and product categories from an intelligent Beauty and Wellness perspective. So I would say it's very important for us to get it right. The reason we looked at the market in this unique way of a pre-market entry for about a year before we actually open doors for formal launch is precisely for us to learn about how to approach the Indian consumer and the Indian entrepreneur: highly educated, highly ambitious, fairly conservative on discretionary spend and disposable income still, especially in premium spaces. We have a lot to learn on our side as well about how to target them at the right level of spend and benefit. By the way, there's a whole host of learnings that we're gathering out of that. We want to get it right. I think these 12 months or so have been really important for us to dial in manufacturing, quality, logistics and distribution and even product formulas to ensure that they meet the consumer properly, and to align the business model itself. So I would say, as we look forward, we still anticipate low revenue impact in 2026

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Medifast, Inc. (OPTAVIA) (MED)

The purest available read on what GLP-1 medications have done to coach-led weight management. Medifast sells meal replacements through independent coaches — Herbalife's model and core category — and Herbalife names it as a direct-selling competitor. Its disclosures show the sales-force and revenue consequences in unusually stark form.

Medifast's 10-K defines the shared weight-management market and explicitly classes GLP-1 medications as a major competitor, while arguing the drugs can be folded into a coached lifestyle program rather than displacing it.

The metabolic health and weight loss industry is very competitive and encompasses a multitude of metabolic health and weight loss products and programs. These include a wide variety of commercial metabolic health and weight loss programs, medications, pharmaceutical products, surgical interventions, books, self-help diets, dietary meal replacements, and appetite suppressants as well as digital tools, app-based health and wellness monitoring solutions, and wearable trackers. The metabolic health and weight loss market is served by a diverse array of competitors. Potential clients seeking to manage their metabolic health or weight can turn to traditional center-based competitors, online diet-oriented sites, self-directed dieting and self-administered products such as prescription medications, over-the-counter medications and supplements, as well as medically supervised programs. Recently, it became clear that medical weight loss solutions, such as GLP-1 medications, have become an increasingly key component of the overall health and wellness ecosystem, and the recent surging acceptance and popularity of these weight loss medications serve as another major competitor, as these products have prompted a huge change in the way that consumers think about weight loss and lifestyle modification solutions in general. We recognize that these weight loss medications have attracted significant attention from the market and pose a threat to our interactions with our traditional client base. Importantly, the efficacy claims of GLP-1 medications for weight loss are based specifically on their incorporation of lifestyle changes that include a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity As a result, under Medifast’s offerings, weight loss medications can be an important element that fits into the overall tailored lifestyle plans that also include coaching, community support, nutritionally balanced meals, and exercise.

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Medifast's re-sized addressable market after the GLP-1 shock: management restates the opportunity as metabolic health rather than weight loss, citing a survey it commissioned. Peer-supplied figures, presented as management's framing.

Nicholas M. Johnson — President: We believe the market opportunity is massive. More than 90% of U.S. adults are metabolically unhealthy, or in other words, are affected by metabolic dysfunction. Our online survey conducted with KRC Research found that nearly 94% of Americans are concerned about at least one aspect of their metabolic health, 85% believe metabolic dysfunction can be reversed, and 84% view metabolic health as central to overall well-being. Yet despite that concern, 80% of Americans report limited understanding of what it truly means to be metabolically healthy. The combination of concern, belief in reversibility, and low understanding of how to achieve change represents a huge opportunity that our science-backed, coach-guided approach is designed to address.

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The sales-force arithmetic behind the repositioning: active earning coaches down roughly 45% year-over-year to about 14,000, attributed in part to GLP-1 adoption, against a 19% gain in revenue per remaining coach.

James P. Maloney — Chief Financial Officer: Revenue for the first quarter was $76 million, a decrease of 34.3% versus the year-earlier period, primarily due to a decrease in the number of active earning coaches. We ended the quarter with approximately 14,000 active earning coaches, a decrease of 44.9% from 2025. This decline was driven in part by the rapid adoption of GLP-1 medications, which continues to impact the traditional weight loss category. It is also reflective of our continued work to build a new coach leadership structure comprised of the most productive executive director organizations. This work resulted in average revenue per active earning coach for the first quarter of $5,432, a year-over-year increase of 19.2%. This growth reaffirms the green shoot we saw during Q4 2025, with coach productivity continuing to increase both year over year and sequentially. The 19% year-over-year gain is the largest increase for any quarter in five years, and the sequential quarterly increase of 16% is the highest in eight years.

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USANA Health Sciences, Inc. (USNA)

A direct-selling nutrition company of comparable model and China weighting that Herbalife names as a competitor, and that names Herbalife back as a rival for distributor talent. It is furthest along in the strategic question facing Herbalife: whether a direct seller should become an omni-channel branded nutrition company.

USANA's 10-K competition disclosure: it competes on two fronts — for consumers across retail, e-commerce and direct selling, and for distributor talent against Amway, Herbalife and Nu Skin by name.

Our business through USANA, Hiya, and Rise is very competitive and the barriers to entry are not significant. We compete with manufacturers, distributors, and retailers of nutritional products in many channels, including global direct selling, direct-to consumer, specialty retail stores, wholesale stores, e-commerce businesses such as Amazon, and the internet generally. We also compete with other public and privately owned direct sellers for distributor talent, including for example Amway, Herbalife, and Nu Skin. On both fronts, compared to USANA, Hiya, and Rise, many of our competitors are significantly larger, have a longer operating history, higher visibility and name recognition, and greater financial resources. We compete with these entities by emphasizing the strengths of our business, as described in the "Operating Strengths" section above.

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USANA's CEO frames the company's defining story as a move away from single-channel direct selling, and lists the three levers being pulled on the legacy business: a rebuilt compensation plan, faster product launches, and systems modernisation.

Kevin Guest — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer: Our first quarter results reflect USANA Health Sciences, Inc.'s continued and deliberate transformation from a single-channel direct sales business to a diversified omni-channel health and wellness platform. That evolution is the defining story of this company right now, and the progress we are making across our three business segments reinforces our confidence that this strategy will deliver sustained, compounding value over time. In our core nutritional business, we saw sequential improvement in Q1. Net sales of $204 million grew 7% sequentially, driven by active customer growth, particularly in our China market, which benefited from customer acquisition activity around the Lunar New Year. The sequential improvement is encouraging and consistent with our view that the actions we are taking to stabilize the business are beginning to take hold. These actions are organized around three clear priorities. First, we are advancing the rollout of our enhanced brand partner compensation plan, which is designed to strengthen the business opportunity and improve the productivity and retention of our distributor network. Second, we are accelerating new product launches, bringing a robust pipeline of new and upgraded formulations to market. And third, we are accelerating our technology initiatives to modernize our core systems and fundamentally improve how customers experience our brands while driving future cost efficiencies across our IT infrastructure. Taken together, we remain confident that these initiatives will continue to stabilize active customer account and position the core nutritional business for a return to sustainable growth.

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The disclosed pace of that channel shift: non-direct-selling brands guided to exceed 20% of net sales, from roughly 1% two years earlier — a quantified precedent for the diversification question at Herbalife.

Kevin Guest — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer: We are reaffirming our full-year 2026 guidance across all metrics, projecting consolidated net sales of $925 million to $1 billion. Omni-channel net sales are on track to represent more than 20% of total net sales this year, up from 16% in 2025 and approximately 1% just two years ago. That trajectory speaks to how quickly our omnichannel platform is taking shape.

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Nature's Sunshine Products, Inc. (NATR)

The direct seller of nutritional supplements that is currently growing. It names Herbalife as a competitor for both product sales and independent consultants, and its results are the counter-case to the industry-decline narrative: growth driven by digital, subscription and social commerce layered on top of a consultant network.

Nature's Sunshine's 10-K names Herbalife first among the direct sellers it competes with for both product sales and independent consultants, and sets out what it believes that competition actually turns on.

We compete in the nutritional and personal care industry against companies that sell through retail stores, as well as against other direct selling companies. For example, we compete against manufacturers and retailers of nutritional and personal care products, which are distributed through supermarkets, drug stores, health food stores, vitamin outlets, discount stores and mass market retailers, among others. We compete for product sales and independent consultants with many other direct selling companies, including Herbalife, LifeVantage, Nu Skin and USANA, among others. We believe that the principal components of competition in the direct selling of nutritional and personal care products are consultant expertise and service, product quality and differentiation, price and brand recognition.

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Nature's Sunshine's stated digital and subscription metrics for North America — the channel economics a direct seller cites when arguing the consultant model can be grown alongside e-commerce rather than replaced by it.

L. Shane Jones — Chief Financial Officer: Our digital business continues to produce very robust year-over-year growth, increasing 42% in Q1. This was fueled by continued strength in customer acquisition, coupled with robust adoption of our subscription Autoship program, leading to better retention and frequency from returning customers. Similar to the exceptionally strong growth that we have seen over the last several quarters, new digital customers increased 60% in Q1. Likewise, subscription Autoship continued to perform very well in Q1, accounting for 48% of the digital sales coming through our website. As we have highlighted before, continued improvement in this metric is a leading indicator for future growth and profitability, since the lifetime value of customers that utilize subscription Autoship is more than three times higher than other customers.

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The company's stated ambition to roughly double revenue, with the first three planks being digital expansion, selective US brick-and-mortar retail, and deeper penetration of existing direct-selling markets — the same three doors open to Herbalife.

Kenneth Romanzi — Chief Executive Officer: To build upon this foundation, we have developed what we call Nature's Sunshine Products, Inc.'s Vision for Growth, with the goals of doubling our sales to $1 billion and to leverage our infrastructure to achieve a 15% EBITDA margin over time. Key elements of our vision for growth plan include: one, continued rapid expansion of our digital business; two, explore distribution in select U.S. brick-and-mortar retail channels, working in a complementary, harmonious manner with our existing business; three, deeper penetration in our direct selling markets.

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BellRing Brands, Inc. (Premier Protein) (BRBR)

The company Herbalife lists first among its product competitors. Premier Protein serves the ready-to-drink shake occasion that Herbalife's Formula 1 meal replacement addresses, but through club, mass and e-commerce rather than distributors — making its category disclosures the clearest available sizing of the retail alternative.

BellRing's sizing of the US ready-to-drink shake category and its own share position, with GLP-1 usage cited as a demand driver rather than a threat. Declining legacy brands are identified as the share donors.

Darcy Davenport — President and CEO: Now turning to the category. RTD shakes are one of the fastest-growing CPG categories, fueled by consumer health and wellness trends, functional beverage preferences and GLP-1 usage. Household penetration of 54% highlights a long runway for growth as it trails mature CPG categories, which are often at 80% to 90%. Retailers are leaning into this opportunity, increasing category space, testing higher traffic aisle locations and expanding display space to capture growing consumer demand. The success of this category, which has doubled in retail sales since 2019 to $8.7 billion, has naturally attracted competition. Currently, the two leaders, including Premier Protein, have approximately 50% market share. The other participants include newer insurgent and crossover brands and some declining legacy brands. Of note, legacy brands, which collectively represent approximately 30% of the category, have been meaningful share donors for several years now.

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Two quarters later, the same management describes the cost of holding that position: promoted volume at 27% of the category and the first decline in shake spend per household in five years, even with the category still growing.

Darcy Davenport — President and CEO: To illustrate, in Q2, promotional frequency and breadth increased sharply year-over-year as newer brands, particularly smaller entrants, continue to invest aggressively to gain traction. As a result, 27% of RTD shake category volumes were sold on price promotion, up 8 percentage points versus last year and a meaningful step up from Q1. Household penetration in protein shakes continues to grow, with little evidence of consumers shifting spend out of shakes into other protein enhanced products. However, in recent months, we have seen a contraction in RTD shake spend per household marking the first decline in buy rate in 5 years. This reflects an increasingly value-focused consumer with greater reliance on promotions, low-priced brands and valuepriced pack sizes. In short, the category remains strong with RTD shakes up 8%, which is well ahead of the broader food and beverage industry.

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The Simply Good Foods Company (SMPL)

Named by Herbalife as a product competitor. Its Atkins brand is the retail weight-management franchise most directly analogous to Herbalife's core proposition, and Simply Good Foods reports it separately — giving a clean, disclosed read on how a branded weight-management portfolio is performing inside a growing nutrition category.

Simply Good Foods sizes category growth against its own decline, with the weight-management brand Atkins down almost a quarter year-over-year. Management's stated read is that the gap is execution, not category.

Joe Scalzo — President and Chief Executive Officer: Net sales declined 6.3% to $357 million. Gross margin declined 390 basis points to 32.5%, and adjusted EBITDA declined 22.5% to $57.2 million. Quest and OWYN net sales grew 1.1% and 3.6% versus prior year respectively, and both brands performed slightly better than we expected. We continue to see encouraging momentum in some parts of the portfolio, particularly Quest chips and milkshakes. Atkins net sales declined 24.6% in the quarter, reflecting continued pressure from declining household penetration as a result of insufficient marketing support behind the brand. Our retail takeaway declined 6.7% during the quarter, essentially unchanged from the second quarter. The purposeful nutrition category grew 10% during the same timeframe. As I have spent more time inside the business, it's becoming increasingly clear to me that our challenges are largely execution-driven rather than category-driven.

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Management on what went wrong at Atkins — including messaging that moved away from the brand's core weight-management proposition — and its stated view that a weight-management brand still has a role alongside GLP-1 use.

Joe Scalzo — President and Chief Executive Officer: Total brand household penetration currently stands at 8.5%, down 220 basis points from last year. Consistent with what we said last quarter, there are also broad brand factors we are addressing: Atkins has not received the proper level of marketing support; messaging was less consistent and moved away from the brand's core weight management proposition; and the ability to recruit new consumers weakened, which led to slower velocities. Our focus now is on resetting the retail baseline and managing Atkins in a more disciplined, fact-based manner. Many of our retail partners continue to view Atkins as a relevant brand with a meaningful base of loyal heavy buyers. Importantly, we do not believe Atkins needs to be a different brand. Rather, it needs to become a better executed version of the brand consumers have trusted for decades. We believe that Atkins can play a meaningful role in a GLP-1 world with consumers seeking weight management benefits.

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Competition

Nu Skin Enterprises, Inc. (NUS)

Medifast, Inc. (OPTAVIA) (MED)

USANA Health Sciences, Inc. (USNA)

Nature's Sunshine Products, Inc. (NATR)

BellRing Brands, Inc. (Premier Protein) (BRBR)

The Simply Good Foods Company (SMPL)

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