Nathan Vardi at Forbes reports:
Herbalife , the controversial nutritional supplements seller, delivered a blow to its adversaries on Tuesday by reporting first-quarter earnings that suggested its business model was not as broken as some had predicted.
Herbalife reported that in the first three months of 2015 it earned $1.29 per share on an adjusted basis, beating consensus estimates on Wall Street that had called for the company to earn $1.01 per share, the bottom of the company’s first quarter earnings guidance of $1.00 to $1.10 per share.
In addition to the earnings beat, the company raised its earnings per share guidance for 2015 to a range of $4.30 to $4.60 per share. The previous range Herbalife had given investors was $4.10 to $4.50 per share. Herbalife posted revenue of $1.11 billion in the first quarter of 2015,