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Natural Health Trends Corp, (NASDAQ: BHIP) announced their second quarter financial results. The company is happy to report that they have continued to grow and improve, and that sales have been growing steadily.

Sales in the second quarter of 2008 were $12.3 million, an improvement over the first quarter of 2008 when sales were $11.4 million. NHT was also pleased that second quarter operating losses fell from $698,000 in the first quarter of 2008 to only $364,000 in the second quarter.

Chris Sharng, the company’s president, said, “We were very pleased to see our cost-cutting and revenue-generating efforts begin to pay off in the second quarter. We stabilized our cash balance, and operating earnings of the business were positive, considering non-cash items such as depreciation and stock-based compensation totaled $500,000. We believe that the nascent revenue momentum we gained through certain personnel changes, compensation plan changes and dynamic training sessions were the drivers of this improvement.

The company expects that the summer season will be a bit slower, and coupled with Olympics which will affect their sales in Asia, they might see the numbers fall a bit. NHT says in the next quarter they will continue to focus on ways to improve gross profit margin as well as maintaining revenue momentum.

Unfortunately for the company, the stock has not responded very well over the past year. Hitting a 52-week high of over $7 per share, the price has been languishing at or below $1 for most of 2008.

If you could not be a part of the conference call that they company held today, not to worry, full second quarter results are available on the company’s website on the conference call page.

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Natural Health Trends (NHT) has just filed a lawsuit against one of their own. In a bizarre development, the company is suing Terry LaCore, the company’s founder and former director and executive officer.

The lawsuit claims that LaCore and his new company, bHIP Global, Inc., which is an energy drink company, has engaged in various unlawful activities including employee raiding, theft of confidential information and stealing trade secrets. The suit was filed in a state court in Dallas,Texas.

The lawsuit claims that LaCore illegally attempt to lure employees, distributors and vendors to his newest venture and persuaded them to break contracts. Natural Health Trends also claims that LaCore named his latest project using Natural Health Trend’s stock ticker symbol to confuse potential customers and investors.

NHT Global has been granted a temporary order to halt the use of confidential information as well as halting contact with any of their current employees.

Chris Sharng, President of Natural Health Trends Corp., said, “Our lawsuit describes dishonest and unethical conduct that is increasingly blatant. It seeks to stop that conduct and end an illegal assault on our relationships with our distributors, employees and vendors. We intend to use all legal means in any and all jurisdictions to prevent further attempts to undermine our business.”

These types of lawsuits are unfortunately pretty common in the MLM world and we’ve seen some battles go back and forth for quite some time (Quixtar vs. MonaVie). While i dont want to take sides, it does seem a bit odd, that Mr. LaCore, who was the founder of NHT and obviously is no longer involved with them, would choose to name a new venture, bHIP- I mean, i’m not a rocket scientist, but NHT Globals NASDAQ ticker is BHIP- that seems to me to be a bit more than a coincidence. Even their websites names are almost identical. We will keep you posted…..

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Natural Health Trends Corp. has launched their product line in Italy. NHT Global’s European Subsidiary, NHT Global Europe, S.R.L announced the launch at two event held last week in the Italian cities of Bologna and Vincenza.

Distributors in Italy will have several options in how they choose to sell the NHT health products; they can either choose the person-to-person option or use the advanced Retail Cart tool, an easy to use online application that allows distributors to sell to a larger group of consumers.

“The importance of our ability to sell direct in Italy is very significant,” commented Paolo Giuliani, the managing consultant in charge of NHT Global’s European market development. With the opening of retail selling in Italy, we are closing the pre-launch phase and can now direct the pan-European expansion of NHT Global from a solid foundation,”

According to the Worldwide Federation of Direct Selling, the direct sales market in Italy saw sales in excess of $3.59 billion dollars, making it the eighth largest market in the world, and the third largest in Europe. NHT anticipates that after a successful launch in Europe, their continued expansion throughout Europe will smooth. NHT also announced a new enhanced compensation plan for its European markets that will make it easier and more lucrative to be a distributor for the company.

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Natural Health Trends Corp. - an international health and wellness company - appointed a new President of NHT Global, North Asia. Joe Wood, who is currently serving as President of NHT Global Korea, will now oversee operations in the Japanese market, as well as providing assistance with product development in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Wood began his career with NHT in 2002 as President of the Korean subsidiary. Prior to NHT, Wood, a Brigham Young graduate, worked in executive positions at eBay and NusSkin. Wood went on to complete the Master Program at Seoul University to gain more insight into Asian and Korean business practices and their culture.

The Korean market was new for the company when Wood took over in 2002. Joe Wood was in charge of building the business over there, and it had to be done from the ground up. From 2002 to the present, Wood built a strong business in Korea from scratch. The country is now a thriving market for the NHT.

Chris Sharng, President of Natural Health Trends, said, “Joe has the experience and the proven track record to develop the kind of business that we envision as the future of the Company.

Mr. Wood said, “I am excited to take on this additional opportunity with Natural Health Trends. The Company is extremely supportive of my desire to implement the successful tools and methods that we have developed in Korea into our other Northern Asian markets.”

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