Participants

BG Hunt; Vice President - Treasuer, Admin Services and Investor Relations; NU Skin Enterprises Inc

Ryan Napierski; President, Chief Executive Officer, Director; NU Skin Enterprises Inc

James Thomas; Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President; NU Skin Enterprises Inc

Sydney Wagner; Analyst; Jefferies

Christina Xue; Analyst; DA Davidson

Presentation

Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the fourth-quarter 2024 Nu Skin Enterprises earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions)
Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to B.G. Hunt. Please go ahead.

BG Hunt

Thanks, Lisa, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm B.G. Hunt and would like to introduce myself as the new Head of Investor Relations at Nu Skin. With nearly 20 years at Nu Skin, has held positions in our global tax group, led our administrative services, help build out our Southeast Asia headquarters and will continue to head up our global treasury team. I've enjoyed my early interactions with you and look forward to working more closely to build our investment community as we continue to transform our business towards becoming the world's leading beauty, wellness and lifestyle ecosystem.
With the progress we've made in several areas, I'm excited to turn the time over to Ryan Napierski, President and CEO; and James Thomas, CFO, to share more on the details. Before I do that, let me point out that on today's call, comments will be made that include forward-looking statements. These statements involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from those discussed or anticipated. Please refer today's earnings release and our SEC filings for a complete discussion of these risks.
Also during the call, certain financial numbers may be discussed that differ from comparable numbers obtained in our financial statements. We believe these non-GAAP numbers assist in comparing period-to-period results in a more consistent manner. Please refer to our investor website, ir.nuskin.com, for any required reconciliation of these non-GAAP numbers.
And with that, I'd now like to turn the call over to Ryan.

Ryan Napierski

Thanks, B.G. Thanks, everyone, for joining the call from snowy Utah, where we're finally getting the snow that we need, much needed here, but thanks for joining the call. I'll begin with an overview on our performance and then discuss our key priorities for 2025 as we continue to transform our journey towards becoming the world's leading integrated beauty, wellness and lifestyle ecosystem.
Our fourth quarter revenue came in above our guidance range with encouraging sequential growth from Q3 to Q4 in our core Nu Skin business. Our adjusted earnings per share, excluding restructuring and other charges, also exceeded our projections. This momentum, combined with the continued strong performance from Rhyz demonstrates progress in our transformational journey. In the quarter, we delivered constant currency growth in the Americas, improved profitability and paid down debt of $40 million. While persistent headwinds remain in China and South Korea, the growth in Latin America and parts of Southeast Asia was particularly encouraging and demonstrates our developing market strategy is gaining traction.
Our Q4 results were driven in part by the launch of our new ageLOC Tru Face Peptide Retinol Complex and the performance of Rhyz. Our newest Tru Face product launched in late 2024 is demonstrating strong market acceptance. This innovative product leverages AI discovered peptide technology to deliver retinol in a unique way, combining 2 types of retinoids for a powerful result in a gentle formula. The success of this launch reinforces our ability to meet evolving consumer demand in the premium beauty space, while maintaining our commitment to innovative formulations.
Our Rhyz segments achieved 28% year-on-year growth in Q4. In January, we announced the strategic transaction of Mavely, with Later and Summit Partners for $250 million. This transaction generated a 5x return on our investments in 2021 and provides further validation of our Rhyz ecosystem strategy, while also strengthening our balance sheet. Through our ongoing commercial relationship with Later, we'll maintain access to Mavely's technology and social commerce capabilities to support our affiliate marketing business. So looking ahead to 2025, we have 3 strategic priorities as we work towards our long-term enterprise vision of becoming the world's leading beauty wellness and lifestyle ecosystem.
First, strengthen our Nu Skin's core business; second, accelerate innovation of our iO intelligent beauty and wellness platform, including Rhyz; and third, improve our operational performance and efficiency. Let's dive deeper into each of these.
First, strengthening our Nu Skin core business. Over the past few years following COVID, direct selling has seen perhaps the greatest level of disruption as consumers have shifted primarily to social online shopping. Social platforms have evolved their algorithms to maximize paid advertising revenue, pushing down authentic product recommendations on their platforms. In addition, the broader declining consumer sentiment in critical markets like China and South Korea has impacted premium beauty and personal care categories. Our teams are acutely aware of these trends and are actively evolving our core business to succeed in the future by enhancing our entrepreneurial business model to more effectively reward affiliates for building their businesses in a social-first manner, while continuing to reward leaders for training and motivating their sales teams.
This new business model combines the best of affiliate marketing with the power of Nu Skin leadership, and we plan to continue to roll it out with enhancements to various markets around the world throughout 2025 and beyond.
We're also refining our product portfolio to better fit today's emerging consumer needs around the world to make room for exciting new product innovations like MYND360 cognitive health -- our cognitive health line, which we began to launch in 2024 and will be launching in additional markets throughout 2025, as well as a full restage of our Tru Face prestige beauty line to be rolled out globally in 2025. Meeting consumers where they are from a price value perspective is critical, particularly as we lean into our developing market segments. With this in mind, we will be increasing our focus on Nu Skin's developing markets as we seek out new growth opportunities.
Leveraging our simplified and focused business model in Latin America, which is responsible for driving significant year-over-year growth in Argentina, we will be leaning into these high potential, yet underperforming markets in 2025 to accelerate performance. Together with ongoing expansion efforts in India as we continue to explore future opportunities, we believe the developing markets will play an increasingly significant role in strengthening our Nu Skin core business in 2025 and years to come.
Our second enterprise priority is to accelerate innovation of our iO, intelligent beauty and wellness platform, including Rhyz. We recognize to truly meet the needs of beauty and wellness consumers around the globe, a company must gather, synthesize and provide insights that demonstrate the difference of the products we produce to consumers.
For the past several years, we have been building out our iO connected beauty and wellness device systems platform, most recently with the launch of WellSpa and RenuSpa in the past few years. This intelligent platform now contains over 25 million connected treatments from nearly 500,000 connected devices with more than 100 million data points providing insights into behaviors and product usage within our iO platform. In 2025, we will begin integrating these topical insights together with data gathered from our biophotonic scanner as we build out a robust beauty and wellness insights database.
These insights will power the AI engine behind our next innovation, Prysm iO, our truly intelligent wellness device. Our scientists at Rhyz labs together with leading spectral imaging researchers have developed a clinically substantiated patent-pending technology that can accurately measure micronutrient absorption in the skin. This noninvasive puck device aims to answer perhaps the biggest question perplexing nutritional supplementation, do my nutritional supplements actually work. And it provides this information at the touch of a fingertip. Prysm iO is scheduled for limited release to top-performing sales leaders around the world in the second half of 2025 with a global launch plan in 2026 as we look to further strengthen our Euromonitor acclaimed physician of being the world's #1 company for beauty and wellness device systems.
We will dive much deeper into Prysm iO and our intelligent wellness journey in our upcoming earnings calls. And third, we will improve operational performance and efficiency around the globe as we align our business to what matters most, innovation, growth and EPS. As we wrap up the previously announced restructuring, we have taken an acute approach to evaluating every line item of our business.
Our team is surgically analyzed our extensive global product portfolio based upon strategic fit, volume and margin as part of our multiyear plan to optimize our global portfolio by more than 50% by the end of 2025. Improving inventory holdings, gross margin and our total cost of fulfillment. Further, our finance and global leadership teams around the world have evaluated every market to optimize operations that will improve focus, execution and profitability around the world. We're leveraging a streamlined model developed for Argentina and extended into Latin America in the past year, which has resulted in both revenue growth and improved profitability across the region.
Our goal is to bring every market around the globe to our profitability targets in 2025. James will dive deeper into our performance optimization plan, which we anticipate will produce meaningful improvements to our overall operating margin in 2025 and the years to come. Just before I wrap up, I want to comment briefly on the transaction of Mavely, one of our Rhyz portfolio businesses announced earlier this year. Mavely represented approximately 4% of the company's revenue last year and transacted for $250 million.
The sale of Mavely has strengthened our balance sheet in many different ways. At a recent investor conference, I was asked how such meaningful value creation was seemingly unnoticed in the market. My answer was that we have been vocal about Rhyz over the past 2 years with specific callouts for Mavely, however, investors did not describe the full value of this asset. The follow-up question was then asked, what is most misunderstood about Nu Skin? My answer in short was that unlike most companies in the beauty and wellness space, our public market valuation is weighted more upon the channel by which our core Nu Skin business distributes our innovative products or services rather than being valued for the full suite of innovations and businesses across our enterprise.
To be clear, we are proud of the direct selling heritage that we've built over 40 years, and I believe that a company should be viewed for its full suite of value drivers. For us, this includes the value inherent within our core Nu Skin business, including our innovative R&D engine, dedicated sales force and our operational infrastructure in nearly 50 markets, as well as new and emerging business within Rhyz, including companies like LifeDNA, Wasatch Labs and various other investments.
Moving forward, it is incumbent upon us as management to continue highlighting potential breakthrough innovations like Mavely, including providing greater visibility into all other value drivers across the enterprise that propel us towards our vision of becoming the world's leading beauty, wellness and lifestyle ecosystem.
So with that, I'll turn the time over to James.

James Thomas

Thank you, Ryan, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. I'll start with a review of our Q4 performance, highlight key takeaways from 2024 and then discuss our outlook for Q1 and full year 2025. I'll be speaking to adjusted non-GAAP financial measures as it pertains to our financial results. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are found on our Investor Relations website. For the fourth quarter, we delivered revenue of $445.6 million, exceeding our previous guidance range despite a 4% negative foreign currency impact of $20.1 million.
Adjusted earnings per share came in at $0.38, surpassing our guidance and slightly ahead of our prior-year $0.37. For the full year, we generated $1.73 billion in revenue, landing within our original guidance even as we navigated an unexpected additional FX headwind of approximately $60 million.
Our Q4 adjusted gross margin was 71.4% compared to 72.1% in the prior year. Within our core Nu Skin business, adjusted gross margin was 76.6%, down from 77.4%, primarily due to a geographic shift in revenue away from China and Korea. As Ryan mentioned, our strategy to streamline the portfolio, focusing on strategic fit, profitability and affordability has successfully reengaged and expanded our opportunity in developing markets with a more targeted product offering.
Due to the expanding success in Latin America and planned rollouts in 2025 in Southeast Asia Pacific and Europe, Africa, we've made the decision to take more aggressive efforts to reduce our portfolio, resulting in a $38.8 million write-down this quarter. These strategic actions are already driving positive momentum, helping us grow our base of sales leaders in Latin America and in turn, increasing revenue in these emerging, but high potential markets. Selling expenses remained consistent at 37.1%. For the core Nu Skin business, selling expense was 40.3%, slightly lower than prior year's 40.8%, in line with expectations. General and administrative expenses improved as a percentage of revenue, declining to 27.1% from 29.7%, reflecting reductions in labor, physical facilities and more efficient promotional spend.
Adjusted operating margin for the quarter was 7.7%, up 130 basis points from 6.4% in the prior year despite top line pressures, demonstrating our commitment to operational efficiency and disciplined cost management.
Over the last several years, our business has navigated significant top line pressures, necessitating a disciplined approach to cost restructuring. Through targeted restructuring efforts, optimized inventory and a migration to a shared services model for technology, we have worked diligently to align our cost structure with our current level of revenue. I'm pleased to report that our 2023 restructuring plan is now materially complete. While these efforts have been challenging, they have positioned us for a more sustainable future as our cost structure is now rightsized to support our forecast performance. With this foundation in place, we are focused on driving greater efficiencies and capturing opportunities for long-term value creation.
I'd like to now shift our focus to our balance sheet and liquidity, where we've made meaningful progress.
A key priority in 2024 was strengthening our balance sheet, and we took significant steps to delever the business. We reduced our debt by $110 million, funded entirely through our cash from operations, highlighting our disciplined approach to capital management. We delivered $70 million in free cash flow, an increase of $10 million over the prior year. In addition, we returned $12 million to shareholders in the form of dividends, maintaining a yield that remains at the high end of our industry peers.
As previously announced on January 3, we sold our Mavely business, which added an approximate $200 million in cash to our balance sheet. Our credit agreement requires us to use the proceeds from the sell towards our debt or business-related capital investments. After the sale in Q1 2025, we used $115 million of these proceeds to further reduce our outstanding debt, reinforcing our commitment to maintaining a strong financial position as we work towards cash to debt neutrality.
We did not repurchase any stock, and have $162.4 million remaining on our current authorization. Looking ahead to 2025, we are encouraged by improving revenue trends across several markets, while continuing to navigate challenges in China and Korea. We project 2025 revenue in the range of $1.48 billion to $1.62 billion, including an estimated foreign currency exchange headwind of $52.5 million or 3%. Excluding Mavely, from the prior year comparison, we anticipate a revenue decline of 3% to 11%. We anticipate earnings per share in the range of $3.45 to $3.85 with adjusted earnings between $0.90 and $1.30.
This reflects strong growth of 7% to 55%, driven by the successful execution of our operational efficiency initiatives. We project first quarter revenue between $345 million and $365 million, factoring in an expected foreign currency headwind of approximately 3%. Reported earnings per share is anticipated to be in the range of $2.65 to $2.75, or $0.10 to $0.20 when excluding the transaction of Mavely. As a reminder, Q1 is historically our lowest quarter due to the seasonality of our business. So in review of 2024, we have taken significant steps to strengthen our financial foundation, enhancing our cash position, materially reducing leverage year-over-year and aligning our inventory portfolio with a renewed brand strategy.
Looking ahead, we are forecasting meaningful earnings growth and are well positioned to deliver even in the face of top line pressures in certain markets. We remain committed to executing our strategy with discipline, providing transparency around our initiatives and driving long-term value for our shareholders. We look forward to sharing our continued progress in the quarters ahead.
And with that, operator, we'll now open up the call for questions.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions)
Sydney Wagner, Jefferies.

Sydney Wagner

You called out continued economic challenges in South Korea and China. Just wondering if you can elaborate on how those trends in those regions progressed throughout the quarter? And then maybe any kind of incremental detail. It sounds like you're continuing to expect headwinds into 2025, but any extra color there you can share?

Ryan Napierski

Yes, Sydney, no, great question. Yes, I think we're all probably reading the same materials. And so I'm not sure how much detail to go into there. But economic outlook reports from various banks and the like continue to be fairly hesitant for both of these markets. And I think a couple of key trends that we're noticing, and then I could give you local context as well from our teams there, is this -- really as economic challenges occur, spending -- consumer spending drops, savings rates go up, unemployment is down.
And economists right now are expecting that to persist throughout 2025. In our -- from our point of view, we have it built into our forecasts as not necessarily getting worse, but we're also not seeing the silver lining yet over there.
So our local teams, as we work with our teams over there, I think their sentiment is relatively consistent that consumers are hesitant to spend these days, I think, discount sellers, especially local brands, both in China and Korea. Coupang, for example, in Korea. China, obviously, a lot of local branding there. That tends to be a consumer priority as it's going on there. So really just we're forecasting out, as we look at the world, it's consistent or similar to what we saw over the past year, but we'll continue to monitor it.
And I think on our side, from a more proactive point of view, we're really trying to lean into how do we support local consumers, very economically challenged times. We look at our product pricing strategy, how those products fit into the market. We look at our emerging opportunity as we obviously are -- provide a bit of a gig type of opportunity there. And so we believe we have opportunities for the market in those places, but I think those macro pressures will continue to persist throughout the year.

Operator

Christina Xue, DA Davidson.

Christina Xue

This is Christina. Congrats on the quarter. I just want to ask about -- I think you mentioned there are going to be certain markets that are expecting to return to growth in '25. So can you talk a little bit about like what markets do you expect to potentially return to growth in '25, notice that Americas had 2 sequential growth period. So -- and what are -- what do you see as a primary catalyst for that kind of like recovery?

Ryan Napierski

Hi, Christina, good hear from you again. Yes, so I think I'll provide comments and maybe James will have additional thoughts there. Yes, some areas that we're particularly encouraged about leaving 2024, and these are kind of subsegment levels. But Latin America is doing really, really well. Of course, we report that up through the Americas segment.
But Latin America is doing well. And we do believe the Americas has real potential to grow next year. Looking forward to Southeast Asia Pacific, also with good potential. Japan, we believe has potential there. And I think those are kind of some of the keys that we're looking at there.
Again, as we just discussed, China and Korea continue to be challenged for the upcoming year. And then Europe, as we watch that, we believe there's opportunities in Europe as well. But James, any additional color you could provide?

James Thomas

Yes. You touched most of the markets where we're seeing in our forecast and in our guide, where we show those signs of growth, really with deploying that developing market strategy, we're looking at how can we expand that into other regions. So Southeast Asia, we're going out with. And then some of our Europe markets, we're also deploying that. And we've seen good success there when we get pricing right.
So those are 2 of them. Ryan called out Japan, where we're seeing growth. And then I will add that the other segments in our guide of down -- 3% to down 11%. We are seeing reduced declines for those other segments. So we're improving in some of those areas, but we're still facing some top line pressures there.
We're working our way through it.

Christina Xue

Maybe another question. I know you started selling on Amazon in the U.S. last year -- early last year. And just wondering like how do you see the sales performance on like on Amazon, like can you comment a little on that?

Ryan Napierski

Yes. I think Amazon has been an interesting journey for us and particularly in the U.S., where we've been exploring various approaches. Obviously, in our business, it's important that we maintain the premium image of our brands and the premium positioning of our brands. And unfortunately, in the third-party marketplaces, there tends to be a lot of discount reselling that hurts the brand and hurts our entrepreneurs opportunities to build their businesses. And so we began a couple of years back -- maybe not quite a couple of years, 18 months or so ago, with an exploration with our partners there to really eliminate leveraging the policies and procedures in Amazon, eliminate or limit the discount reselling by unauthorized sellers on their platform.
And it's really been helpful to do that -- to do that benefit, we've been able to largely minimize that distraction from our own business and our own brand. In addition to that, as we sell our products there, retail plus those products have done well. And we continue to build out that platform. We don't report numbers on it. It's part of our Americas revenue.
What I will say is I think our strategy there is really a dual benefit. On the one side, we're able to offer consumers access to products in a way that only Amazon can from an accessibility perspective with all the benefits of Amazon like Prime, but also the additional benefit is then supporting our affiliates who are in the same marketplace, seeking out customers as well. And so it creates a more fair playing field and while we build our brand there. We'll continue to explore opportunities. We believe that there are platforms around the world, and what we know their platforms around the world that have similar both challenges and opportunities, we're going to continue to explore those in 2025.
And as it becomes a more meaningful part of revenue, I think we'll plan to provide more detail on those. But for now, it's working as we had hoped, and we're leaning further into it to understand how we can provide that dual benefit.

Operator

And that does end our Q&A session for today, and I would like to go ahead and turn the call back over to Ryan Napierski. Please go ahead.

Ryan Napierski

Thank you very much, and thanks for the questions. We really appreciate that. I appreciate you dialing in and would be happy to answer any additional questions that you have, please just feel free to reach out to B.G., James or myself with those. We very much appreciate your paying attention, and you're watching Nu Skin. We're excited about what's coming out in the future.
I know that the world continues to be an unsettled place, but we're here at Nu Skin acutely focused on driving value through innovation with the likes of Prysm iO, with our developing markets and to continue to build out our Rhyz business, which has great potential. And so we look forward to updating you on further calls quarter-by-quarter as these plans unfold. So I look forward to speaking with you in the next 90 days. Take care.

Operator

Thank you all for joining today's conference call. You may now disconnect.