Herbalife Ltd. (HLF) Shares Halted, Re-Audit Complete

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Trading on shares of Herbalife Ltd. (NYSE:HLF) was halted briefly as the company announced that its new auditing firm had completed the required re-audit of its financial statements from 2010, 2011 and 2012. The nutritional supplements company filed its amended 10-K/A for the 2012 fiscal year with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It also filed amended 10-Q/A documents for each of the three quarters of 2012 after the auditing firm finished SAS 100 reviews for them.

Herbalife now up to date on filings

After the filing of these amended documents, Herbalife Ltd. (NYSE:HLF) is now up to date on its regulatory filings. The company reported that there weren’t any “material changes” to its audited statements for the three years in question. PricewaterhouseCoopers, the auditing firm, also didn’t make any material changes to Herbalife’s reports from the first three quarters of this year.

Herbalife was required to have all of its financial statements from the past three years re-audited after its previous accounting firm, KPMG, resigned because of insider trading allegations. KPMG had said that its resignation had nothing to do with Herbalife’s financial statements or accounting practices.

Herbalife shares surge

After trading on Herbalife Ltd. (NYSE:HLF) resumed, shares shot up nearly 9% putting an even greater world of hurt on activist investor Bill Ackman. He took a $1 billion short position in the nutritional supplements company a year ago and has suffered nothing but pain resulting from the public debacle he created.

The company’s shares hit a new 52-week high earlier this month, and it was revealed that Herbalife was working behind the scenes to get Ackman’s clients to pull their funds out of his Pershing Square fund. Numerous big-name investors have lined up against Ackman, taking long positions and helping inflate the company’s shares.

Will Herbalife do a share buyback now?

It has long been expected that the completion of the re-audit of the company’s financial statements would be an upward catalyst, and today’s report shows just how much investors were pleased with the news. Some have suggested that Herbalife Ltd. (NYSE:HLF) will run a share buyback program now that the re-audit has been complete. At this point, however, the company hasn’t announced any repurchases, so this remains speculation.

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