Hain Celestial Names James Meiers As COO; Tightens 2016 Outlook

(RTTNews) - While reporting its third-quarter financial results today, Hain Celestial Group, Inc. (HAIN) said it has appointed James Meiers to the newly-created position of Chief Operations Officer, effective immediately. He will report to Irwin Simon, with responsibility for achieving the cost savings across the company's worldwide operations. The company also tightened its financial outlook for fiscal 2016.

As previously communicated, Hain Celestial commenced a strategic review under Project Terra and has identified approximately $100 million in global cost savings, which it expects to achieve during fiscal years 2017 through 2019.

The company expects these initiatives to include optimizing plants, co-packers and procurement and rationalizing the company's product portfolio, and reinvesting these incremental savings into the business to further brand building efforts and household penetration.

Beginning in fiscal year 2017, the company plans to establish five strategic platforms within Hain Celestial U.S. with the purpose to drive accelerated net sales and margin growth.

In addition, the company will launch Cultivate Ventures, a venture unit. The company has also identified certain brands representing approximately $30 million in sales, which no longer fit into its core strategy for future growth, and it intends to sell these as a group.

For fiscal 2016, Hain Celestial now forecasts earnings in a range of $2.00 to $2.04 per share, and net sales in a range of $2.946 billion to $2.966 billion. Earlier, the company forecast full-year earnings of $1.95 to $2.10 per share and revenue in a range of $2.90 billion to $3.04 billion.

On average, analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect earnings of $2.02 per share for the year on revenues of $2.94 billion. Analysts' estimates typically exclude certain special items.