Thu 27 March 08 · Filed under Fraud News Stories, Pyramid Schemes & MLM
From February 6, 2008 Usana Health Sciences Inc. (NASDAQ:USNA) conference call, comments by CFO (who lied about being a CPA) Gil Fuller:
Now before I turn the time over to Dave, I’ll comment on our guidance. Yesterday in our press release we provided first quarter and full year guidance of 2008. Based on the current business trends, we believe that net sales for the first quarter of 2008 will be between $105 million and $109 million with earnings per share expected to be between $0.63 and $0.66 per share. For the full year 2008, the company is adjusting both its net sales and earnings per share guidance to 7% to 10% growth compared with the full year of 2007.
Closing price of stock on February 6, 2008, per Yahoo: $38.41.
Insider sales of Usana stock between then and now:
Does anyone else find it interesting that Guest, Richardson, and Cooper ended up owning no shares when all was said and done?
Note that shares of Usana were down to $18.97 in after-hours trading today, following the company’s announcement that they won’t come close to the guidance they gave in February. One wonders exactly when the executives knew they were going to completely tank this quarter?
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Tracy,
This is a repeat pattern.
Just prior to FDI releasing the USANA fraud report last year, several insiders bailed.
On Feb. 8, 2007 - Ronald Poelman excercised and sold 10,000 shares for $598,500
On Feb. 9, 2007 - Mark Wilson excercised and sold 10,000 shares for $613,500
On Feb. 12, 2007 - Myron Wentz sold 85,000 shares for $5,183,300
On Feb. 13, 2007 - Jerry McClain excercised and sold 5000 shares for $305,600
On Feb. 20, 2007 - Kevin Guest excercised and sold 18,000 shares for $1,092,960
On Feb. 26, 2007 - Kevin Guest excercised and sold 7255 shares for $442,555
On March 1, 2007 - Bradford Richardson exercised 15,000 shares and sold 5100 shares for $300,000
Six insiders dumped $8,536,415 in a period of 21 days. The report came out on March 15, 2007…
Coincidence? I doubt it.
I do believe that Usana was tipped off to our investigation prior to the release of our report.
Barbara wrote @ March 27th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
This will be interesting to see what happens when the market opens. I will be patiently waiting to see what happens. Who will be there to dump the rest of their shares before all the money IS gone. Term you were right from the start and it is a shame that no one believed you.
Barbara,
Tomorrow will be interesting, but I suspect it may go up slightly higher than today’s aftermarket trading. USANA and their supporting analysts will simply call it a great opportunity to buy.
We’ll see if all my predictions will come true that I have made over the past year. I find the USANA defender’s new tactic is to call me a troll. What they are doing is anyone who speaks negatively of the company and it’s marketing scheme is deemed a troll and should not be responded to. They compound this with the message portrayed in the DVD “The Secret” which talks about the Law of Attraction. They claim that you should only focus on positive things and if you “BELIEVE” you will be successful, then you will. This is used as promotional material for prospecting distributors as a way to convince them they can make a lot of money in USANA.
I’m actually getting quick sick of the way USANA management twists reality. They claimed in their conference call that customers hold off from purchasing USANA product when there is a convention because USANA always reveals some new great product or reformulation. I simply do not believe this because distributors have to generate their quota for the month or else they lose all the sales points built up to that point that have not yet been paid to them. In otherwords, I believe USANA was making up excuses for the fact that their revenues are dropping.
Their Revenues are dropping because - their distributors are dropping out because - they can’t sell the products because - the products are overpriced because - 40% of revenues is used to pay commissions which almost all gets paid to less than 3% of distributors. Simply put, it is a product-based pyramid scheme.
Term - Did you laugh as hard as I did during the conference call when they were talking about how the “negative” stuff disrupted recruiting and their associates had to regroup, etc.??? Wasn’t it just six months ago that they bragged about how their associates “rallied” in the face of the “negative” stuff and that’s why they were doing so well?
Tracy,
I laughed about that remark they made, but it made me realize something. The USANA Spammer on the Yahoo Message Board for USANA’s stock as well as most all of USANA’s Youtube videos serves one huge purpose. To manipulate the search engines so when prospects search USANA on search engines like Google, they are more likely only find positive stories about USANA. This manipulation has been getting worse.
USANA’s comment on the conference call made me wonder whether or not USANA is somewhat behind this type of internet advertising manipulation.
Tracy,
Since you have such a popular forum here, can I introduce a USANA distributor website which exists on USANA’s computer systems? This page has been untouched after I raised concern over a potentially illegal statement: http://www.yourhealthtoday.usana.com/mystory_en.cfm
QUOTE
USANA Nutritional Supplements are listed as the main PDR - recognized gold standard nutritional supplement for the prevention of degenerative diseases such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis, cancer, Alzheimer’s, allergies.
UNQUOTE
This health claim is not allowed and it seems nobody really cares about the fact this above statement violates the law. I have spoke out about this site 3 times on the Yahoo messageboard:
1) 4-May-07 04:30 pm
2) 12-Jun-07 09:33 pm
3) 4-Oct-07 09:31 am
I have also sent the page to the FDA as well…
Seems NOBODY CARES. Not to mention the fact that USANA is supposed to approve what the distributor writes on their website…
Maybe it is just another tempest in a teapot.
TerminatedRamp said:
“Just prior to FDI releasing the USANA fraud report last year, several insiders bailed.
On Feb. 8, 2007 - Ronald Poelman excercised and sold 10,000 shares for $598,500
On Feb. 9, 2007 - Mark Wilson excercised and sold 10,000 shares for $613,500
On Feb. 12, 2007 - Myron Wentz sold 85,000 shares for $5,183,300
On Feb. 13, 2007 - Jerry McClain excercised and sold 5000 shares for $305,600
On Feb. 20, 2007 - Kevin Guest excercised and sold 18,000 shares for $1,092,960
On Feb. 26, 2007 - Kevin Guest excercised and sold 7255 shares for $442,555
On March 1, 2007 - Bradford Richardson exercised 15,000 shares and sold 5100 shares for $300,000
Six insiders dumped $8,536,415 in a period of 21 days. The report came out on March 15, 2007…
Coincidence? I doubt it.”
>>> Then, not long afterwards, they acuse Barry Minkow of short-selling. Funny stuff, isn’t it?
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