Peloton’s Bid to Stay Alive

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Aug 18, 7:30AM EDT

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Peloton’s Bid to Stay Alive — © microgen / Getty Images

Peloton Interactive Inc. (NASDAQ: PTON), the exercise equipment company, has come up with one more scheme to keep itself afloat, another in a line of failed attempts. Peloton for Business attempts to get people who have not used a Peloton product (at least in their offices) to run on one or sit in one at their jobs. (Customers are abandoning these 25 brands.)
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The new plan promotes the “well-being of employees.” Its business sector targets are hospitality, corporate wellness, multifamily residential, education, health care, gyms and community wellness. How it picked these sectors may never be known outside the company.
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The programs are described as “exclusive” and “unique.” Presumably, customers who bought the company’s equipment earlier do not get these, which is a shame.

Peloton has gone through several stages to live beyond the next few quarters. Its bikes have been offered used, as well as in Dick’s Sporting Goods, on Amazon and in Hilton- branded hotels. However, based on Peloton’s financials, these have not worked.
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Peloton will announce earnings later this month. Wall Street appears to think the report will be gloomy. The stock is down 45% this year and trades near a 52-week low at $6.90.
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Peloton lost $276 million in the most recent quarter and over $1 billion in the year that ended then. Revenue for the quarter was $748 million, down 20% year over year.

The newsroom at the Peloton website is filled with a list of efforts to right the ship. None has worked.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.