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In response to recent economic hardships in the state of Utah, XanGo, LLC, a global nutrition and juice company, has donated $50,000 dollars to The Catholic Community Services of Utah (CSS). XanGo made the gift as part of its global charitable giving initiative, known as XanGo Goodness. XanGo Goodness actively supports numerous causes that focus on serving the health and well-being of children and families.

Over the next year, the money donated will be used primarily in Northern and Central Utah to provide assistance to the CCS as they struggle to accommodate the growing number of those who must seek help.  Typically the CCS serves between 6 and 7 hundred lunches a day. Recently however, that number has increased to almost 1,000 lunches a day. The money will not only go to feed the needy, but will also provide assistance with rent, mortgage, food baskets, bills, utilities, and health care.

In a statement released by the Lehi based company, VP of Public relations, Bob Freeze said, “We know there are many people struggling to make it right now. We hope this contribution can alleviate some of their suffering. ”XanGo was eager to give to CSS which has a great reputation as an effective charity. XanGo is confident that CSS will do a wonderful job utilizing the funds where they are needed the most.
  

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There are several companies in the MLM/Network Marketing space which are publicly traded and sometimes may represent better bets than selling products themselves but in a market of uncertain conditions, weary investors may want to sit back.

We conducted a review of the top seven publicly traded stocks to see how they have done over the past year and also compared that to the S&P and the results are pretty interesting.

As you can see from the chart, only 3 of the companies faired better than the S&P - which isn’t saying much since the S&P was down 4% over that timeframe.  The three companies that out-performed the S&P are Pre-Paid Legal (PPD), Herbalife (HLF) and Avon (AVP).

The worst performing stock was Mannatech (MTEX) which was down almost 50% over the past year and NBTY (NTY) didnt do much better at a loss of almost 40%.  USANA (USNA) was down 45%. 

What is troubling about the findings is that while all of these companies trade at a multiple about 1.24X revenue - which is not terrible (to give you a correlation, Wal-Mart trades at roughly 1.5x revenue, Merk trades at 5x revenue and Google trades at 9x revenue) - they dont seem to offer much opportunity to an investor unless you are going to play these stocks off of the peaks and valleys - in which you can make a lot of money (you can lose it too if you are not careful).

Take Pre-Paid Legal as an example.  In the past 52 weeks, the stock hit a high of $71.49 and a low of $39.45.   That differential is significant for many reasons, one of which is if you were able to short the stock* on the way down from its high and start betting it up after it hit its low, you would’ve done extremely well.  

On the other hand, if you were shorting MTEX from July of 2007 through September, you could’ve done equally as well but probably would’ve gotten caught up in its bump up in late September and only lasted a few weeks.  With spreads over the 52 weeks of $4.75 as a low to $16.19 as a high, again, a shrewd investor could’ve made a lot of money.

Don’t get me wrong, the market doesnt play favorites or discriminate towards a specific sector.  While Gold, Oil, Platinum and other commodities have had more stability (and growth), even stocks like Apple (swing range of $83 - $202.06) and Google (swing range of $747.24 - $437) have seen their share of volatility. 

So if you are considering in investing in any of the stocks in the sector, you may want to think pretty hard on the idea and realize that you will probably do much better buying and selling the company products than you would doing the same with their stocks.

*Definition of Short Selling:
Selling of a stock that a person doesn’t own. They hope to profit by buying the stock back at a lower price and returning it. Also called “shorting.” Shorting a stock is basically the same as making a bet that the stock will go down. The investor borrows the shares of stock, sells them immediately, and promises to return the same number of shares later (plus interest). If the stock goes down, they buy the stock back at a lower price and return them.For example, if you short 30 shares of XYZ stock at $30/share and the stock falls to $20/share, you would have made $300 in profit.

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Relìv International, Inc. (Chesterfield, MO) (NASDAQ:RELV), a wellness and direct selling company, today reported net sales for the fourth quarter of $24.6 million, compared to $28.6 million in the same quarter of 2006.

Net income for the fourth quarter equaled $697,000 or $0.04 per diluted share, compared to net income of $2.0 million or $0.12 per diluted share in the fourth quarter of 2006.

Relìv reported U.S. sales of $21.1 million for the fourth quarter, compared to $25.4 million for the same quarter in 2006. International net sales (sales outside of the U.S.) equaled $3.5 million compared to $3.2 million for the fourth quarter of 2006.

Net sales for 2007 equaled $111.1 million compared to $117.5 million for 2006. Net income for 2007 was $5.0 million or $0.31 per diluted share, compared to net income of $7.9 million or $0.47 per diluted share in 2006. International net sales for the year rose approximately 9 percent to $12.7 million due primarily to the weakening U.S. dollar.

Reliv’s distributor base ended the year at 69,970, representing a 7.7 percent increase over the size of the distributor base on Dec. 31, 2006.

“We are not pleased with our performance in 2007,” said Robert L. Montgomery, chairman, president and chief executive officer. “For the full year, we saw fewer distributor advancements and a resulting decline in the size of our average order. We need to reverse these trends in 2008 in order to achieve top-line and bottom-line growth,” he said.

“To boost sales and sponsoring, we are actively encouraging the increased use of sales tools by our field,” Montgomery said. “The sales tools include a new issue of Success from Home magazine that was launched last month, and a newspaper-style publication for use at this time mainly outside of the United States,” he added.

“We also are sending our management team to special events around the United States to provide better support to distributors and to gain a more personal, effective understanding of their businesses,” he said. “We believe this will help motivate distributors to expand their businesses and achieve advancements more quickly.”

Reliv’s balance sheet remains solid. The company had $12.1 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments as of Dec. 31, 2007. Relìv has no long-term debt. Cash from operations in 2007 was $4.8 million.

“Our success is built on two basic foundations,” Montgomery said. “One, we make nutrition simple by providing superb, proprietary nutritional supplements. Two, we offer distributors an outstanding business opportunity.”

“In addition, we still have tremendous growth opportunities in our existing markets. In 2008, Relìv reaches its 20th anniversary,” Montgomery said. “We are focused on making this a special year by helping our distributors succeed through initiatives to increase retail sales and sponsorship.”

Relìv will host a conference call to discuss the fourth-quarter and full-year 2007 earnings with investors at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Feb. 27, 2008. The dial-in number for investors is 888-680-0879. The participant passcode is 25881517. To register, please call in 15 minutes prior to start of the call. A replay of this call will be available for one week by telephone from 3:00 p.m. Eastern by calling 888-286-8010 and using the passcode 18905001. A live web cast of this call will be available through the Investor Relations section of Relìv’s Web site. An online archive of the broadcast is available on Relìv’s Web here.

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Herbalife Ltd. (Los Angeles, CA) (NYSE: HLF) reported fourth quarter net sales of $578.1 million, an increase of 18.6 percent compared to the same period of 2006. This record performance was attributable to double-digit growth in several of the company’s top countries; the U.S. up 22.1 percent, Taiwan up 18.9 percent, Italy up 21.9 percent and China up 145.8 percent compared to the same period in 2006, coupled with the favorable impact from currency fluctuations. The company’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Michael O. Johnson, said, “We are pleased to report our 16th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth and record net sales reflecting the strong performance of our independent distributor organization. Our margins and record bottom line performance reflects the strong top line growth coupled with our initiatives to continually leverage our infrastructure to improve profitability.”

During the fourth quarter 2007, total Sales Leaders(1) increased 16.0 percent to 473,846 and new Sales Leaders increased 10.4 percent to 56,739 versus the fourth quarter of 2006. The company’s President’s Team membership increased 11.8 percent to 1,105 members and the company’s prestigious Chairman Club increased to 32 members. Greg Probert, the company’s president and chief operating officer, said, “The growth rate of new Sales Leaders in the fourth quarter was the highest of the year, reflecting the tremendous momentum in our distributor organization.”

While the company experienced a record fourth quarter, the stock did not seem to respond during the same period. Since September, the stock has gone from $42 to a high of $45 and then a low of $36.50 to where it closed today at $43. While the spread between the beginning of the fourth quarter of 2007 and today is flat, the stock has had a great deal of volatility to it over the past year.

Fortunately for shareholders of HLF, the stock has yielded a 10% increase over the past year and still remains a much better performer than many in the MLM/Network Marketing space.

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