First of all, congratulations to Bob Moran, Ken Martindale, Tricia Tolivar, and the team of GNC (NYSE:GNC) Jedi Knights. Over the past 12 months I have had the great pleasure and opportunity to interact with many dedicated front line GNC employees, as I made my dozens of channel checks and kicked the proverbial tires. On balance, I found most GNC employees both passionate and knowledgeable in what they do. These front line folks are the glue that connects consumers with GNC's excellent VMS assortment, or as Bob Moran would say, the firm's trusted advisors.
Today's partnership with Harbin Pharmaceutical was the silver bullet needed to solve this rubik's cube. I'm not sure who ultimately played James B. Donovan, the lawyer turned International Diplomat, but I'm thrilled that in the final analysis GNC Pittsburgh and Harbin came together to form a win-win business partnership. The most important and perhaps overlooked aspects to this partnership is that Harbin received five board seats. Moreover, I was surprised by the tone of this morning's conference, as the sell side conference wasn't happy for management. In fact, only one analyst, Shane Higgins, from Deutsche Bank, congratulated the GNC management team and other sell siders were steadfastly looking for any reason to justify their silly "sell ratings" and $2.50 to $4 price targets. Lo and behold, I don't recall reading any sell side research that discussed the prospect of a Chinese partnership. As far as I know I was the only "analyst" that was tilting at windmills and singing from the mountain tops about GNC doing a deal in China.
