Peloton‘s pandemic-era boom appears to have run its course.
Shares of the at-home fitness company were down more than 30% today after it lowered annual sales forecasts by close to $1 billion in its recent Q1 earnings report.
Peloton previously anticipated total revenue for fiscal 2022 to be at least $5.4 billion. On Thursday, the company lowered that estimate to at least $4.4 billion. Overall, Peloton’s revenue for Q1 grew 6% year over year to $805 million, which fell short of expectations of $810 million from analysts surveyed by Yahoo Finance. Net loss was $376 million, or $1.25 per diluted share.
“As discussed last quarter, we anticipated fiscal 2022 would be a very challenging year to forecast, given unusual year-ago comparisons, demand uncertainty amidst re-opening economies, and widely-reported supply chain constraints and commodity cost pressures,” CEO John Foley wrote in a letter to shareholders.
With gyms and fitness centered closed throughout most of 2020, Peloton briefly reigned as a leading at-home fitness option. Now, as COVID-19 restrictions ease, data shows that people are heading back to the gym in droves.
Watch on FN
According to data from foot traffic analyzer Placer.ai, visits to gyms are back on the rise. During the week of October 11, gym visits were down only 8.3% compared to 2019. That’s compared to the month of January, where visits were down 31.7% compared to the same month in 2019. Crunch Fitness and Planet Fitness were the companies with the largest increases in foot traffic.
Planet Fitness on Thursday said that membership has almost returned to a pre-pandemic levels.
Contending with brick and mortar gyms isn’t the only problem causing Peloton’s recent slump.
In August, Peloton slashed the price of its stationary spin bike by $400 to eliminate high-cost barriers and make the bike more accessible to less affluent riders. Peloton said this move, as well as fewer bike deliveries, impacted its revenue for the quarter.
In a note to investors, BMO Capital Markets analyst Simeon Siegel said that more issues for Peloton likely await as the company’s pandemic-era success wanes.
“We worry lowered numbers remain too optimistic and that the biggest issues may actually lie ahead,” he wrote.
