Huge growth in China and Japan drives Nu Skin Q4 results

The US-based company revealed that its net sales increased by 19 percent to $588.2m, a figure that was reported to have not been significantly impacted by foreign currency translations.

The strong sales performance during the quarter was reflected by the fact that net income increased by just under 20 percent, from $49.5m, to $59.2m.

Breaking the results for the current quarter down on a regional basis, the company’s biggest geographic market, North Asia, showed a revenue jump of more than 22 percent, up from $204.3m, to $250.2m, a figure that reflected a 14 percent increase in the number of sales representatives.

This figure was driven by particularly strong growth in both Japan, where sales were up 26 percent and in South Korea, where the figure was up 19 percent.

South Asia/Pacific drags peformance down​

In greater China sales increased 28 percent to $141.7m – a figure that was driven by a huge increase in the number of sales representatives, which were up by 57 percent during the period.

However, in the South Asia/Pacific region the sales results dragged the overall performance down, falling by 3 per cent to $63.5m, which was reflected by an 11 percent fall in the number of sales representatives.

In the Americas, sales improved by 4 percent to $80.1m, while in the struggling European market, the company posted a highly creditable 38 percent increase in sales, to $52.8m.

"We expect 2013 will be another record year with healthy trends in all of our regions and a record launch of our new ageLOC weight management system, which we plan to introduce through a global limited time offer in the fall,"​ said Hunt.

The overall performance in 2012 has led the company to raise its forecast for the full year 2013, with first quarter revenues expected to be in the region of $500m to $510m, and annual revenues expected to be in the region of $2.30bn to $2.35bn.

Full year revenue up 24 percent​

Revenue for the full year was up 24 percent to $2.17bn, while net income increased from $153.3m to $221.6m.

Company CEO Truman Hunt said that the results came off the back off a raft of new and innovative anti-aging products, launched during the course of the year, which in turn gives the company reason to expect that growth will be maintained for the financial year ahead.

"Our growth in the fourth quarter was driven by particularly strong trends in several key markets including Japan, South Korea and Mainland China where we continue to see tremendous results from our latest ageLOC products,”​ said Hunt.

“We expect the upcoming launch of our ageLOC weight-management system to drive significant growth in the back-half of the year."​