Peloton Inc. Is suspending production for several of its at-home fitness products, CNBC reports. The news, based off internal documents, sent the company’s stock down to lows not seen since before the pandemic.
At a confidential presentation on Jan. 10th, the company said it was seeing “significant reduction” in consumer demand for its products, leading it to decide on placing a temporary halt on manufacturing.
The fitness-machine firm will temporarily suspend production of its Bike (its hero product), Tread treadmill machine, and other products. Production will stop for at least six weeks for some devices and much longer for others, such as the more expensive Bike+, which won’t pick up production again before June.
After the report was published, Peloton’s stock dropped by more than 28% on Thursday afternoon alone, erasing all of Peloton’s gains since March 2020.
The drop represents a dramatic turn in the fortunes of the interactive fitness behemoth. Peloton’s shares have now sunk more than 70% over the past three months, and the company’s lowest valuation on Thursday of $23.98 was below the company’s price at initial public offering of $29, made in 2019.
Peloton’s stock had hit unprecedented market highs during the pandemic, as lockdowns and gym closures pushed more consumers towards Peloton’s signature at-home interactive fitness products. Its market value reached an all-time high of $49.3 billion in December 2020, but it’s since had a spectacular fall from grace, to around $8.5 billion in January 2022.
The rapid uptick in demand for Peloton’s products in 2020 pushed the company to increase its supply and production speed, and moved to acquire a massive new production space worth $400 million.
However, pandemic fatigue and reopenings have brought about the opposite problem: abundant supply but low demand. Add to that the current supply chain crisis and the notoriously slow delivery times that are turning many potential buyers off, Peloton’s inventory may already be cracking at the seams.
Peloton wasn’t the only “at-home stock” to suffer a drop on Thursday. Netflix’s disappointing subscriber figures, disclosed in its quarterly earnings report, prompted a nearly 20% drop, while Disney and Roku were also down, as the stock market sent a message that work-from-home stocks are suffering a correction much like the Nasdaq in general.
In May, Peloton recalled its line of treadmills after dozens of injury complaints and the death of a child, after weeks spent dismissing the reports. In November, the company also had to recall the pedals of about 27,000 of its bikes after even more injury complaints surfaced, five of which required stitches or other medical care. Peloton’s no good, very bad press over the past few months culminated in a ‘Sex and the City’ episode in December that portrayed its devices as potentially lethal.
Peloton will make its first quarterly report on Feb. 8th, as Wall Street analysts are apprehensive that the company’s web-based business model will survive as more and more people begin venturing outside of their homes.
Peloton did not immediately respond to Coins2Day’s request for comment.
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