Oh boy, I know I was looking forward to putting out the all-clear sign to buy Avon (AVP) next week, now that it has a new CEO, Sheri McCoy, late of Johnson & Johnson (JNJ). I figured that next week might be the clean-up quarter and it was time to get long.
But today Fred Hassan resigned as non-executive chairman and while I totally understand that he has other commitments, as he outlines, I think that next week will be one tough week for both Avon and, yes, Herbalife (HLF), which also reports its earnings.
I used to despise Avon under Andrea Jung. She was a total Wall-of-Shamer. But McCoy is the real McCoy, who was fabulous at JNJ. I also like Michael Johnson from Herbalife, but have had to back away from that one because my pal, Herb Greenberg, has red-flagged it and I never go against his red flags. Plus, the main reason to have been in that stock is the redeployment of its cash flow to buy back shares or pay big dividends, and now that it has no auditor it can't do either.
All in all, two that you want to avoid.
If you must, go for the direct seller that's got no issues. Tupperware's (TUP) not trying to sell product to others who sell it, like HLF, and it has had no brushes with the authorities, like Avon.
It did go down on that last quarter, but I think, after speaking with CEO Rick Goings, it is the one to buy and I have to apologize to him for putting his terrific company in the same blog entry of the others.
Action Alerts PLUS, which Cramer co-manages as a charitable trust, has no positions in the stocks mentioned.