Quarterly report pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d)

Significant Accounting Policies (Policies)

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Significant Accounting Policies (Policies)
9 Months Ended
Sep. 30, 2012
Basis of Presentation

Basis of Presentation

The unaudited interim financial information of the Company has been prepared in accordance with Article 10 of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s, or the SEC, Regulation S-X. Accordingly, it does not include all of the information required by generally accepted accounting principles in the U.S., or U.S. GAAP, for complete financial statements. The condensed consolidated balance sheet at December 31, 2011 was derived from the audited financial statements at that date and does not include all the disclosures required by U.S. GAAP. The Company’s unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements as of September 30, 2012, and for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2012 and 2011, include Herbalife and all of its direct and indirect subsidiaries. In the opinion of management, the accompanying financial information contains all adjustments, consisting of normal recurring adjustments, necessary to present fairly the Company’s unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements as of September 30, 2012, and for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2012 and 2011. These unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements should be read in conjunction with the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2011, or the 2011 10-K. Operating results for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2012, are not necessarily indicative of the results that may be expected for the year ending December 31, 2012.

New Accounting Pronouncements

New Accounting Pronouncements

In July 2012, the Financial Accounting Standards Board, or FASB, issued Accounting Standards Update, or ASU, No. 2012-02, Intangibles – Goodwill and Other (Topic 350): Testing Indefinite-Lived Intangible Assets for Impairment. This ASU allows an entity to first assess qualitative factors to determine whether it is necessary to perform the quantitative impairment test for indefinite-lived intangible assets. An organization that elects to perform a qualitative assessment is required to perform the quantitative impairment test for an indefinite-lived intangible asset if it is more likely than not that the asset is impaired. This ASU, which applies to all public, private, and not-for-profit organizations, is effective for annual and interim impairment tests performed for fiscal years beginning after September 15, 2012. Early adoption is permitted, including for annual and interim impairment tests performed as of a date before July 27, 2012, if a public entity’s financial statements for the most recent annual or interim period have not yet been issued or, for nonpublic entities, have not yet been made available for issuance. The adoption of this ASU will not have a material impact on the Company’s consolidated financial statements, as it is intended to simplify the impairment assessment for indefinite-lived intangible assets.

Venezuela

Venezuela

Currency restrictions enacted by the Venezuelan government in 2003 have become more restrictive and have impacted the ability of the Company’s subsidiary in Venezuela, Herbalife Venezuela, to obtain U.S. dollars in exchange for Venezuelan Bolivars, or Bolivars, at the official foreign exchange rates from the Venezuelan government and its foreign exchange commission, CADIVI. The application and approval processes have been intermittently delayed and the timing and ability to obtain U.S. dollars at the official exchange rates remains uncertain. Effective January 1, 2012, additional laws were enacted that required companies to register with the Registry of Users of the System of Transactions with Securities in Foreign Currency, or RUSITME, prior to transacting with the SITME, the regulated system, which is controlled by the Central Bank of Venezuela. As an alternative exchange mechanism, the Company has participated in certain bond offerings from the Venezuelan government and from Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., or PDVSA, a Venezuelan state-owned petroleum company, where the Company effectively purchased bonds with its Bolivars and then sold the bonds for U.S. dollars. In other instances, the Company has also used other alternative legal exchange mechanisms for currency exchanges.

During the nine months ended September 30, 2012, the Company recognized $4.1 million of foreign exchange losses as a result of exchanging Bolivars for U.S. dollars using alternative legal exchange mechanisms that were approximately 41% less favorable than the 5.3 Bolivars per U.S. dollar published SITME rate. During the nine months ended September 30, 2012, the Company has exchanged 53.9 million Bolivars for $6.0 million U.S. dollars using these alternative legal exchange mechanisms. The Company did not exchange Bolivars for U.S. dollars using these alternative legal exchange mechanisms during the three months ended September 30, 2012. As of September 30, 2012, Herbalife Venezuela’s net monetary assets and liabilities denominated in Bolivars were approximately $69.0 million, and included approximately $71.6 million in Bolivar denominated cash and cash equivalents. The majority of these Bolivar denominated assets and liabilities were remeasured at the SITME rate. The Company continues to remeasure its Bolivars at the published SITME rate given the limited availability of alternative exchange mechanisms and the uncertainty in the effective exchange rate for alternative exchange mechanisms. These remeasured amounts, including cash and cash equivalents, being reported on the Company’s consolidated balance sheet using the published SITME rate may not accurately represent the amount of U.S. dollars that the Company could ultimately realize. While the Company continues to monitor the exchange mechanisms and restrictions under SITME, and assess and monitor the current economic and political environment in Venezuela, there is no assurance that the Company will be able to exchange Bolivars into U.S. dollars on a timely basis. Although Venezuela is an important market in the Company’s South and Central America region, Herbalife Venezuela’s net sales represented approximately 3% and 2% of the Company’s consolidated net sales for the nine months ended September 30, 2012 and 2011, respectively, and its total assets represented approximately 6% and 3% of the Company’s consolidated total assets as of September 30, 2012 and December 31, 2011, respectively.

See the Company’s 2011 10-K for further information on Herbalife Venezuela and Venezuela’s highly inflationary economy.

Segment Reporting

The Company is a nutrition company that sells a wide range of weight management products, nutritional supplements and personal care products within one industry segment as defined under FASB Accounting Standards Codification, or ASC, Topic 280, Segment Reporting. The Company’s products are manufactured by third party providers and by the Company in its Suzhou, China facility and in its Lake Forest, California facility, and then are sold to independent distributors who both consume and sell Herbalife products to retail consumers or other distributors. Revenues reflect sales of products by the Company to its distributors and are categorized based on geographic location.

As of September 30, 2012, the Company sold products in 84 countries throughout the world and was organized and managed by geographic regions. The Company aggregates its operating segments, excluding China, into one reporting segment, or the Primary Reporting Segment, as management believes that the Company’s operating segments have similar operating characteristics and similar long term operating performance. In making this determination, management believes that the operating segments are similar in the nature of the products sold, the product acquisition process, the types of customers to whom products are sold, the methods used to distribute the products, and the nature of the regulatory environment. China has been identified as a separate reporting segment as it does not meet the criteria for aggregation. The operating information for the Primary Reporting Segment and China, and sales by product line are as follows:

Derivatives and Hedging Policies

Interest Rate Risk Management

The Company engages in an interest rate hedging strategy for which the hedged transactions are forecasted interest payments on the Credit Facility. The hedged risk is the variability of forecasted interest rate cash flows, where the hedging strategy involves the purchase of interest rate swaps. For the outstanding cash flow hedges on interest rate exposures at September 30, 2012, the maximum length of time over which the Company is hedging certain of these exposures is approximately ten months.

During August 2009, the Company entered into four interest rate swap agreements with an effective date of December 31, 2009. The agreements collectively provide for the Company to pay interest for less than a four-year period at a weighted average fixed rate of 2.78% on notional amounts aggregating to $140.0 million while receiving interest for the same period at the one month LIBOR rate on the same notional amounts. These agreements will expire in July 2013. These swaps at inception were designated as cash flow hedges against the variability in the LIBOR interest rate on the Company’s term loan under the Prior Credit Facility or against the variability in the LIBOR interest rate on any replacement debt. The Company’s term loan under the Prior Credit Facility was terminated in March 2011 and refinanced with the Credit Facility as discussed further in Note 4, Long-Term Debt. The Company’s swaps remain effective and continue to be designated as cash flow hedges against the variability in certain LIBOR interest rate borrowings under the Credit Facility at LIBOR plus 1.50% to 2.50%, fixing the Company’s weighted average effective rate on the notional amounts at 4.28% to 5.28%. There was no hedge ineffectiveness recorded as result of this refinancing event.

The Company assesses hedge effectiveness and measures hedge ineffectiveness at least quarterly. During the three and nine months ended September 30, 2012 and 2011, the ineffective portion relating to these hedges was immaterial and the hedges remained effective as of September 30, 2012. Consequently, all changes in the fair value of the derivatives are deferred and recorded in other comprehensive income (loss) until the related forecasted transactions are recognized in the consolidated statements of income. The fair value of the interest rate swap agreements are based on third-party quotes. At September 30, 2012 and December 31, 2011, the Company recorded the interest rate swaps as liabilities at their fair value of $3.0 million and $5.1 million, respectively.

Fair Value Measurement

The Company applies the provisions of FASB ASC Topic 820, Fair Value Measurements and Disclosures, or ASC 820, for its financial and non-financial assets and liabilities. ASC 820 defines fair value as the price that would be received to sell an asset or paid to transfer a liability in an orderly transaction between market participants at the measurement date. ASC 820 establishes a fair value hierarchy, which prioritizes the inputs used in measuring fair value into three broad levels as follows:

Level 1 inputs are quoted prices (unadjusted) in active markets for identical assets or liabilities that the reporting entity has the ability to access at the measurement date.

Level 2 inputs include quoted prices for similar assets or liabilities in active markets, quoted prices for identical or similar assets or liabilities in markets that are not active, inputs other than quoted prices that are observable for the asset or liability and inputs that are derived principally from or corroborated by observable market data by correlation or other means.

Level 3 inputs are unobservable inputs for the asset or liability.

The Company measures certain assets and liabilities at fair value as discussed throughout the notes to its consolidated financial statements. Foreign exchange currency contracts and interest rate swaps are valued using standard calculations and models. Foreign exchange currency contracts are valued primarily based on inputs such as observable forward rates, spot rates and foreign currency exchange rates at the reporting period ended date. Interest rate swaps are valued primarily based on inputs such as LIBOR and swap yield curves at the reporting period ended date.