Vitamin Shoppe: It’s Not GNC

Barclays upgraded share s of Vitamin Shoppe (VSI) today, expressing a confidence in management that was, well, heartwarming.

Barclays’ analysts Meredith Adler and Sean Kras call Vitamin Shoppe’s management team “thoughtful, deliberate and disciplined” and praise their ability to diversify the business. As a result, they upgraded Vitamin Shoppe to Overweight from Equal Weight two days after Vitamin Shoppe released its earnings.

But Adler and Kras also spent a good number of words explaining what Vitamin Shoppe isn’t–specifically, it’s not GNC Holdings (GNC):

[Vitamin Shoppe] said it saw no fundamental change in consumer demand, nor did it feel much pressure from the bad media reports about things like multi-vitamins and fish oil, unlike GNC. [Vitamin Shoppe] has a much broader offering than GNC, however, so weakness in any one category rarely has a major impact on [Vitamin Shoppe's] overall sales the way it does at GNC. Conversely, it benefits less when there are few very successful products. For example, diet is a far smaller part of the sales mix at [Vitamin Shoppe] than at GNC. Last year diet had some strong products, but this year there are fewer. GNC's comps were stronger than [Vitamin Shoppe's] last year, but we like the stability of [Vitamin Shoppe's] business, especially in the current environment.

Shares of Vitamin Shoppe have gained 1.8% to $43.42 at 3:24 p.m., while GNC has risen 0.8% to $37.43.