TheStateofFitness

• Net income $101.4M, up 40.6%. Adjusted EBITDA $246.5M, up 16.8%. Comparable center revenue up 9.1%. Execution with no drama.
• They're shrinking on purpose: guidance of 838,000 to 848,000 members at year end, below today's 860,000. Insurance-administered memberships down 18.9% by design while every other category grew 4.2%.
• In-center revenue grew 15.1%, faster than the company, led by Dynamic Personal Training. Increasingly a personal training business that owns great real estate.
• Two ratings upgrades mean cheaper capital for a company spending roughly $1 billion a year on growth. That capex number is the one thing that gives the panel pause.

"They're just executing at an incredibly high level and it's getting a little boring. There's really no drama around Life Time."

• The $10 membership is coming back. After raising the classic card from $10 to $15, Planet reintroduces $10 as a regional promotion in September. The competition never followed the increase.
• Read the headline carefully: revenue growth includes a $10.1M advertising-fund increase that passes straight to expense, and net income includes a $12.5M one-time gain on the Australian franchisee stake. Adjusted net income declined.
• New retention machinery is coming: a mystery shopping program and a 100-day onboarding push. Basic retail blocking-and-tackling the brand is only now installing.
• 21.5 million members and 2,930 clubs is a great business, but rolling back a price increase is the scenario no membership company wants.

"You've sold a bunch of memberships at fifteen dollars, and now your existing members are like, but I just joined last month at fifteen. It's kind of a nightmare."

• The sentence that stops you: Xponential paid more to its lenders last quarter than the entire business earned from operations.
• Club Pilates, the crown jewel, ran negative 5% same store sales. The panel's read: Pilates supply has caught up with demand. Anyone underwriting a new reformer studio should hear that.
• An entirely new leadership team is in place. Stabilizing force, or a revolving door on a ship that's clearly for sale?
• The likeliest path: sell Club Pilates, likely worth around $1 billion on its own, pay off the debt, and go private.

"My prediction was wrong, but I'll double down: on the next call we will not be talking about them as a public company."

• The turnaround is real: costs cut, debt nearly gone, first full year in the black. What's unproven is growth. Subscribers fell 9% and guidance calls for more shrinkage.
• New hardware is coming for holiday 2027, with hints at a strength product. The panel's question: build it, or buy something like Tonal?
• Peloton-branded equipment is heading into gyms through the Precor channel, on top of hotels and amenity spaces. That one matters to operators.
• Peloton takes outsized criticism because it was best in class when connected fitness peaked. Most of its competitors from that era no longer exist.

"I thought maybe Peloton was gonna go the way of Xponential several times during these quarterly podcasts. So I was delighted to see this. I'm rooting for this company."

• Fitness is now bigger than Outdoor, Aviation, or Marine, growing on strong demand for advanced wearables while Outdoor went backwards.
• The TrainingPeaks and TrainHeroic acquisition puts the industry's dominant coaching software in a hardware company's hands. Integration details still under wraps.
• CIRQA, field-tested for this episode: $200, no subscription, battery life measured in days. The software still trails Oura, and with subscription fatigue where it is, that's a trade a lot of people will take.
• Garmin Health, featured this quarter with Andy Beckman, runs remote patient monitoring, military readiness pilots, workforce safety, and activity-priced insurance underwriting.

"Sometimes there's a few creaky things from a software perspective, but I'm also not paying a monthly fee as a customer. I love that about the company."