Hain Celestial shares slide after earnings miss
Hain Celestial Group (HAIN) shares slid Wednesday after the organic and natural products maker reported earnings that disappointed investors and said it would sell its organic poultry business.
The Lake Success, New York-based company, one of the nation's biggest makers of natural shampoos and skin cleansers, on Wednesday reported fiscal second-quarter profit of $47.1 million and revenue of $775.2 million, both shy of Wall Street forecasts.
Noting 14 straight months of sales declines by Hain, SunTrust Robinson Humphrey analyst William Chappell said the trouble seems to be more than inventory "rationalization and promotional timing shifts."
Down about 6 percent in the last 12 months and off 14 percent since the start of 2018, Hain shares were lately down nearly 4 percent.
The company also said it intends to divest is Hain Pure Protein business, which include the FreeBird and Empire Kosher brands.
"While we continue to believe this is a highly attractive business with very good growth potential, as you saw in our numbers last quarter, we have determined it is not core to our go-forward strategy," Irwin David Simon, the company's founder and CEO, told analysts on Wednesday in a call to present Hain's latest earnings.
While declining to elaborate, Simon said Hain had received "a tremendous amount of interest in this business."
Activist investor Glenn Welling of Engaged Capital in September reached an agreement that brought half a dozen independent directors to Hain's board, with Welling taking a seat on the company's strategic review working group.
The sale of the Pure Protein unit first came up in June, when Simon reportedly said in a June analysts call that Hain was reviewing all of its units as part of a broader revamp in its strategy.
