You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: These statements involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from those discussed or anticipated.
Also during the call, certain financial numbers may be discussed that differ from comparable numbers obtained in our financial statements.
We believe these non-GAAP financial numbers assist in comparing period-to-period results in a more consistent manner.
nuskin.com for any required reconciliation of non-GAAP numbers.
And with that, I'll turn the time over to Ritch.
We really appreciate that you join us today.
I'm so pleased with our progress in becoming a customer-obsessed, socially enabled business that has generated record results in this first quarter.
Our strategy has positioned us well for success amid powerful macro trends and associated shifts in consumer behaviors.
I want to recognize our amazing and talented sales leaders and dedicated and loyal employees who are responsible for the great results we are reporting today.
We made critical enhancements to our business as we implemented our strategy over the past few years.
For example, we refined the cadence of our product launches.
We increased our focus on attracting and retaining customers.
We aligned our sales compensation structure to enable social commerce.
And we invested in manufacturing companies to secure our supply chain.
These and other strategic enhancements helped us drive 31% revenue growth and 153% earnings-per-share growth in the first quarter.
As a result, we're reporting the best first quarter in Nu Skin's history for both revenue and earnings per share.
And we are raising our guidance for the year.
As Ryan and I continue to work closely together on developing and leading the execution of this strategy, the transition of leadership responsibilities is progressing well.
I am so confident that the business is in great hands.
This is the right team to build on the existing foundation and drive continued growth and success in the future.
I would like to highlight progress on a few of our key initiatives.
First, we continue to build upon our 37-year history of developing world-class beauty and wellness products that help people look and feel their best.
For example, as people look for ways to enjoy a spa-like experience at home, our beauty devices, including ageLOC LumiSpa and Boost, continue to grow in popularity.
In fact, Euromonitor recently named Nu Skin the world's #1 beauty device systems brand for the fourth consecutive year.
As consumers become increasingly mindful of what goes into the products they use, we extended our product philosophy with Nutricentials Bioadaptives that feature clean formulas and sustainable packaging.
Next, even as the world moves toward a new normal, our social commerce strategy is here to stay.
We recognize the trend of consumers moving to digital platforms long before COVID-19, which accelerated this transition.
Our triple-digit growth in the West is a result of our brand affiliates embracing our social commerce model.
We're reaching a larger and younger demographic, and the business continues to gain momentum, with 34% customer growth and 22% and sales leader growth in the first quarter.
I'm encouraged also by our improving geographic balance, which Ryan will speak to in more detail in a moment.
I would like to highlight the growth in our manufacturing segment, which achieved record results and reported 69% revenue growth.
We continue to lean into our sustainability efforts with ongoing initiatives to reduce the environmental impact of our business operations, provide more ecofriendly packaging and strengthen our commitment to responsible sourcing, including our investments in controlled environment agriculture.
Given our first quarter performance, increasing sales leader interest in our planned new product introductions and strong customer and sales leader growth, we are raising our 2021 guidance.
The midpoint of our adjusted guidance points to growth of about 10% for revenue and 15% for earnings per share.
We are confident in our strategy, and we're optimistic about our future.
I've loved partnering with Ritch over the past few years as we've refined our vision to become the world's leading innovative beauty and wellness company powered by our dynamic affiliate opportunity platform.
This vision builds on our foundational product philosophy and the strength of our person-to-person business model, infusing digital, social and mobile capabilities that are shaping us into a leading social commerce company.
Our ultimate aspiration is to become the world's leading beauty and wellness platform.
We are witnessing seismic global shifts in consumer behaviors.
From digital, social and mobile connections to the expansion of the gig economy, our world is changing rapidly.
Traditional advertising, retail and e-commerce are being disrupted by influencer marketing and social commerce like never before, a trend that has accelerated significantly over the last year.
These trends, combined with our strategic investments over the past years to build greater digital capabilities, have positioned us well to realize today's opportunities and accelerate our own pace of change.
This strategy has resulted in strong customer and sales leader growth and record first quarter results in both revenue and EPS.
Before I go into more detail about the quarter, I want to run through the three key components of our strategy to grow: our innovative products, our unique affiliate channel and our powerful platform.
First, regarding innovative products, we've refined our cadence of bringing innovative beauty and wellness products to market.
We play in the fastest growing product categories in beauty and wellness, including beauty devices.
This category is nearly $7 billion and is projected to grow more than 20% annually between now and 2030.
As Ritch mentioned, this is the fourth consecutive year Euromonitor has ranked Nu Skin as the world's #1 beauty device systems brand.
This further validates our scientific rigor as a unique strength and competitive advantage in the beauty industry.
Our next step to expand our dominant position will be to add connectivity to our devices as part of our Empower Me personalization strategy that we introduced to all of you at Investor Day.
The way people engage with beauty and wellness has changed as shopping behaviors and personalized product experiences have become increasingly digital.
For us, this shift has resulted in more than 90% of our revenue coming from online transactions, with approximately half our revenue coming from recurring customer subscription and loyalty programs.
I'm excited about the recent product launches of ageLOC Boost and Nutricentials Bioadaptives, which generated more than $35 million for the quarter in a limited number of markets.
We'll continue to strengthen our industry-leading position with our robust product pipeline in 2021 and beyond.
Later this year, we'll introduce two new products through our proven global launch process, leveraging our robust R&D capabilities in both beauty and wellness.
First, we'll introduce a unique beauty-from-within product line, beginning with Beauty Focus Collagen+ with our proprietary formula aimed at disrupting the burgeoning $50 billion beauty supplement market.
This product is clinically proven to help improve skin health and complement other Nu Skin products, including our LumiSpa beauty system.
Second, we'll introduce our next major Pharmanex innovation, ageLOC Meta, a metabolic health supplement.
A recent study of U.S. adults indicated that 88% are metabolically unhealthy.
And this product helps us address this acute wellness dilemma.
Additionally, we plan to begin introducing connected devices in early 2022 and beyond.
Connected devices will further personalize and enhance the customer experience while providing additional insight into consumers' needs.
These powerful beauty device systems and innovative products, combined with our global subscription and loyalty programs, create a unique opportunity for us that increase customer acquisition and lifetime value as we continue to meet the needs of beauty and wellness customers.
Next, our flexible and powerful affiliate channel is evolving to support social commerce business.
In essence, we're taking the best of our face-to-face person-to-person model, including a passionate sales force, personal touch, trusted product recommendations and a connected community.
And we're evolving it into a digital-first affiliate marketing engine that's powered by our socially enabled global sales force.
In many ways, our historically unique style of influencer and affiliate marketing is now the approach that many companies and brands around the world are trying to replicate.
This approach has always been at the core of our business and is now being amplified by our social commerce strategy.
Our first quarter results throughout the West and parts of the East are further evidence that social commerce is an emerging model that will transform the beauty and wellness industry.
Third, our powerful affiliate opportunity platform connects consumers with people or -- sorry, people who are seeking innovative beauty and wellness products with brand affiliates who help them navigate their personal journey.
And it all happens within a digital ecosystem that enables our affiliates to attract, connect, transact and service consumers in nearly 50 markets.
In our opportunity platform, affiliates and leaders can effectively serve their customers' personal needs by accessing hundreds of beauty and wellness products.
We continue to introduce new digital and social tools to make running a powerful and personalized social commerce business more simple and effective These tools include Vera, our personal product recommendation tool that is currently being rolled out around the globe; MySite, our personal product storefronts available in most of our markets; WeShop, China's personal storefront model to be introduced in the second half of this year; and digital training tools to expand the reach and capability of our brand affiliates.
So when combined, our flexible Velocity sales compensation program, our global footprint of nearly 50 markets, our best-in-class manufacturing capabilities and our significant digital transformation, all come together with an unmatched products to empower our affiliates to build their own socially enabled beauty and wellness businesses.
Across Nu Skin, we're focused on driving consumer growth and loyalty and creating entrepreneurial opportunities for brand affiliates as we expand social commerce around the globe.
I've known Connie for years as an industry colleague.
She's an amazing business leader with a long track record of successfully guiding global organizations.
She'll lead our global markets and customer experience office as we further expand social commerce.
I look forward to introducing you to Connie in future calls.
Turning now to our global markets.
We continue to take steps to improve our geographic revenue balance.
This will create more sustainable growth moving forward and make us less susceptible to individual market fluctuations and geopolitical issues.
Beginning with the Americas/Pacific, our accelerated performance continues to be driven by the expanding adoption of social commerce.
This region posted first quarter constant currency revenue growth of 97% with growth in every market.
This region is now roughly the size of our Mainland China business and on pace to become our largest business unit.
Customers and sales leaders both grew significantly, demonstrating sustainable growth across all key metrics as they prepare to launch Beauty Focus Collagen+ and ageLOC Boost in the second half.
Europe, Middle East and Africa also posted significant constant currency revenue growth of 98% year-over-year as leaders embrace social commerce throughout the region.
The U.K., Germany, France and Poland led the way as we partnered with sales leaders for the launch of Nutricentials Bioadaptives and on effective product promotions.
EMEA achieved the highest growth in customers and sales leaders of any region, providing momentum as we move into Q2 and beyond.
Mainland China grew 1% in local currency this quarter with customers up 16%.
We continue to invest in new social commerce technologies in this market, including our own WeShop initiative in partnership with Tencent, which begins to roll out in the second half of this year.
This will further reduce our dependency on in-person meetings, which we believe will better enable our sales leaders to adopt social commerce within China's own robust digital ecosystem.
Hong Kong and Taiwan recorded a 3% constant currency decline, with Taiwan's growth being offset by continued macro challenges in Hong Kong.
South Korea remained even with the prior year's quarter, with sales led by our TR90 weight management system and the introduction of ageLOC Boost.
Customers declined 12% due to promotional activities last year, while sales leaders grew by 7% in the quarter.
South Korea is focused now on adopting social commerce throughout the market.
Southeast Asia's constant currency revenue declined 5%, impacted by lingering effects of COVID in certain markets.
But we anticipate increased social commerce adoption across the region, which will generate renewed growth in time.
I'd also like to highlight Japan's 11% growth in local currency during the quarter.
Our business there is starting to capture gear as new and younger consumers discover our beauty and wellness products, including our recent ageLOC Boost and Nutricentials Bioadaptive launches.
We've raised guidance for the year based upon the optimism we're seeing in our aggregate global business.
So let me wrap up by saying that our future looks brighter today than it ever has.
We are fully leaning into our mission to empower people to improve lives and our vision to become the world's leading innovative beauty and wellness company that's powered by our dynamic affiliate opportunity platform.
Our strategy, investments and commitment to operational excellence are aligned to this goal and will drive even greater value for our customers, affiliates, employees and shareholders throughout the remainder of 2021 and beyond.
And with that, I'll turn the time over to Mark to go over financial results for the quarter and to update guidance.
I'll provide some additional color regarding our financial results, give Q2 guidance and update our full year 2021 outlook.
First quarter revenue and earnings per share came in above the top end of our prior guidance.
Q1 revenue increased 31% to $677 million, with a positive foreign currency impact of 5.7%.
Earnings per share for the quarter increased 153% to $0.91.
Gross margin for the quarter improved sequentially 80 basis points to 74.8% due to product mix and easing of air freight charges versus the past few quarters.
Gross margin was 75.7% in the prior year quarter.
Nu Skin Q1 gross margins were 77.8% against 78.1% in the prior year.
Our gross margin continues to be impacted by growth in our West markets and our manufacturing segment.
However, this growth benefits us by lowering our overall tax rate.
Speaking of our Manufacturing segment, a primary purpose of those acquisitions was to secure our supply chain.
One of the most significant challenges of COVID-19 has been widespread supply chain disruptions.
The agility and flexibility of our supply chain has allowed us to maintain our product launch schedule and, for the most part, keep our key products in stock.
Selling expense as a percent of revenue was 40.4% compared to 39.8% in the prior year.
For the Nu Skin business, it was 43.4% compared to 42%.
As a reminder, selling expenses fluctuate quarter-to-quarter and often increase during strong revenue growth as more of our sales leaders qualify for incentives.
General and administrative expense as a percent of revenue was 25.1% compared to 28.9% year-over-year.
We continue to leverage our infrastructure to support revenue growth and improve operating margin, accelerating earnings growth.
I am very pleased with our operating margin for the quarter, which improved to 9.3% compared to 7.1% in the prior year quarter.
This is another strong step toward our stated goal of 13% operating margin.
The other income expense line reflects a $1.6 million gain compared to a $6.2 million expense in the prior year.
The improvement was driven by foreign currency, reduced interest expense and investment income.
Consistent with expectations and first quarter historical trends, cash from operations was an outflow of $18.9 million.
We paid $19.3 million in dividends and continued our focus on generating shareholder value by repurchasing $50.4 million of our stock with $275.4 million remaining in authorization.
Over the past five quarters, we have repurchased more than six million shares.
Our tax rate for the quarter was 26.5%, benefited by increased profits in the West, as I mentioned earlier.
Due to our strong first quarter results, strengthening trends and robust 2021 planned product introductions, we are increasing the top end of our annual revenue guidance by approximately $60 million and our earnings per share by $0.20.
Our 2021 annual revenue guidance is now $2.8 billion to $2.87 billion, with earnings per share of $4.05 to $4.30.
This guidance assumes a positive foreign currency impact of 3% to 4% and a tax rate of 26% to 32%.
Our second quarter revenue guidance is $680 million to $705 million, assuming a positive foreign currency impact of approximately 5%.
Q2 earnings per share guidance is $0.97 and to $1.07 and assumes a tax rate of 27% to 30%.

user
qtrly earnings per share $0.91.
sees q2 2021 revenue $680 to $705 million.
sees q2 2021 earnings per share $0.97 to $1.07.
sees 2021 revenue $2.80 to $2.87 billion.
sees 2021 earnings per share $4.05 to $4.30.

assistant