Talk about a rough road.
On Tuesday, shares of Peloton, the connected fitness-equipment maker known for its at-home gear and fitness app, were down 16.4% since the start of the year. That makes it the worst performing Nasdaq 100 component in 2021.
During the pandemic, millions of Americans flocked to Peloton’s at-home stationary bicycles and fitness sessions as coronavirus-induced lockdowns forced the closure of gyms across the country. Peloton boasts almost 2 million digital subscribers to date, each of whom pay up to $39 monthly for virtual classes. Peloton bikes themselves cost up to $2,500.
After an IPO in September 2019, the company struck gold in 2020, with $1.8 billion in sales during the fiscal year ended June 30, doubling what it had made the year before. Near its peak, Peloton stock had sextupled in price to $147.17, giving the company a market capitalization of a whopping $46 billion. That’s roughly equivalent to that of Ford Motor Co.
But the stock always attracted doubters as well. As gyms begin to reopen, they wondered, would those at-home routines stick, or was this a purely pandemic-driven fad?
In an interview with Fortune earlier this month, Simeon Siegel, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets, said Peloton’s stock was “detached from reality” and should trade at about $33, nearly 80% below where it was at the time.
Others remain confident that Peloton will rebound. In a recent report on the future of fitness tech from Macquarie Group, lifestyle analyst Paul Golding and media tech analyst Tim Nollen wrote that they expect Peloton’s stock to rise to $190 in the next 12 months.
“We expect FitTechs to continue growing as distribution platforms in their own right, across content types like music, branding campaigns, lifestyle video content, and eSports, leading to new revenue opportunities in licensing/ads,” Golding and Nollen wrote in the report.
In November, Peloton made headlines when it announced that Beyoncé would be collaborating with the company to develop a series of classes inspired by her music and personal brand.
“We don’t think that [Peloton] is only enjoying these tailwinds [of success] because of COVID,” Golding says in an interview with Fortune. “We think that it is the structural evolution of how fitness is consumed.”
Meanwhile, Peloton is facing stark competition from a host of other companies looking to capitalize on the fitness company’s success. Most notably, Apple introduced Fitness+ in December, and Lululemon paid a half-billion dollars to buy Mirror in June. In addition, Nike, Under Armour, and Strava have all made steps toward revving up their own fitness apps recently.
