The Hain Celestial Group, Inc. (HAIN): Healthy Eating Isn’t Going Away

The following video segment is part of a full interview, in which The Motley Fool’s Brendan Byrnes sits down with Irwin Simon, the founder and CEO of The Hain Celestial Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAIN), to take a closer look at the better-for-you food revolution. In this segment, they discuss how brand equity and a broad consumer base make the company a great investment.

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Brendan Byrnes: My last question is, let’s say one reason that maybe a long-term investor should invest in The Hain Celestial Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAIN), maybe a longer-term horizon that we advocate here at The Motley Fool. What do you think is just one great reason to invest in The Hain Celestial Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAIN)?

Irwin Simon: So listen, let’s step back. I don’t think, and I come back and you see consumers and sometimes investors looking at Nielsens every four weeks. I mean there are promotions; there are consumers who shop from one retailer to another. So looking at The Hain Celestial Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAIN) on a four-week basis or a monthly basis or a quarterly basis, there are so many different metrics that are continuously changing.

We are in the second or third inning of eating healthy and you just heard me talk about cans of soup and Campbell’s and Progresso. You heard me talk about baby food. You heard me talk about snacks. So it’s not that consumption is growing overall out there; it’s what’s happening is the consumer keeps moving away from conventional brands and eating more and more healthy foods.

So if you come back and look at Whole Foods Market, Inc. (NASDAQ:WFM), if they opened up a thousand stores, we’re their largest provider of bread products. Each store opening up is worth $400,000 to $500,000 in new sales. But when a new Whole Foods Market, Inc. (NASDAQ:WFM) opens up, every other retailer that wants to compete with them brings more natural foods in there.

So with that, it just, No. 1, our expansion and distribution. No. 2 is more and more Whole Foods opening up, the more and more retailers that will open up around that. And I come back and I say this here: No. 1, brands, brands, brands, brands. Brand equity, brand equity, brand equity, and we own some of the greatest brands within the natural organic food industry.