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Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

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Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

#181

Post by tootie »

roland35 wrote: post #83

Peloton does have a lot going for it. From everyone I've heard, their physical products are well made (with the exception of the treadmill issue..). They have extremely low churn which is hard to do in fitness. The main problem is that they grew too fast. All the pandemic sales were probably just pulled forward from future sales, not a sign of sustainable growth. They overcommitted and now need to trim back again.

That's part of the criticism. The investor group was upset that the CEO built up way too much production infrastructure for what should have been viewed as a temporary bump in demand. Peloton is very vertically integrated committed to a ton of capacity they don't need.

Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

#182

Post by scarface74 »

esics6A wrote: post #177
scarface74 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean you shouldn’t admire a CEO who took a company from near bankruptcy in 1997 to the most valuable company in the US in 2011?

Wall Street thought he was a loser too after we was fired as CEO of Apple and just another dumb founder and he should sell his company to IBM. This story repeats again and again. Steve Jobs proved them all wrong and now everything Apple does is brilliant and they should buy Peloton.

Jobs was never CEO during his first tenure.

Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

#183

Post by jonwachob91 »

slingnow wrote: post #163
AndrewOMartin wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, apart from the fact that their treadmill kills kids, their products are exemplary.

Exemplary? Have you even tried other stationary bikes? You can get a BETTER stationary bike for less than the cost of a Peloton bike.

Do you have any recommendations?

Preferably one I don't HAVE to pay a subscription to use...

Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

#184

Post by danielecook »

treyfitty wrote: post #158

I'm in awe of how many different sources a person had to sift through in order to get all this data. Is there software in this space? My naive sense is that it took months to get this deck together.

Maybe something like this?

https://www.devontechnologies.com/apps/devonthink

I haven’t used it personally but I think it could be used for this type of research.

Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

#186

Post by s1mon »

From what I've heard, Peloton is spending way more than the retail price of the bikes to make them. There's certainly plenty of successful businesses that have some sort of loss-leader and then make up for it with follow-on products or services (e.g. game consoles and game publishing). However it seems like they were happily riding the huge growth in subscribers and revenue but not really managing costs in a way that it would ever be net positive.

Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

#188

Post by helsinkiandrew »

sireat wrote: post #161
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #41

Interesting to note that the CEO (39.6%) and co-founders (18%) have 58% of the voting power of Peloton's stock.

The sad thing is that they own much less(how much?) than 58% of the stock. Just like FB, Google and many other companies. You can sell majority ownership and still hold the majority voting power due to dual(and triple) class shares. This is a perversion of common stocks and stockholders rights. In old days there would be such a thing as preferred stock which at least granted liquidation preferences to those buying pr…

> The sad thing is that they own much less(how much?) than 58% of the stock.

The 'special' shares have 20 votes per share - could be as low as 3% of the company. It's hard to see why anyone would invest in a company where someone who was deemed incompetent to be CEO but still has a massive control of the board.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-02-08/peloto...

I wonder if this will be a big issue for companies that look floundering and whose CEO/Founders are seen to be unable to control it - I've seen a few articles about Zuckerburg not being the right CEO for FB/Meta anymore (he also has over 50% of the votes) - if their share price did a few more 25% drops...

Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

#189

Post by shmatt »

bla3 wrote: post #102
fabian2k wrote: post #27

I get the impression they don't like the CEO very much. That was an impressively brutal attack on him, with probably the worst damage inflicted by the CEO's own statements. Blackwells is obviously not a neutral party here, there's a reason they created this thing. But on first glance it looks like a pretty solid argument that the management at Peleton is seriously flawed. I don't really buy the arguments on why Pelet…

Matt Levine made the point that the CEO has enough shares to control the board, so the point of this deck was to convince _the CEO_ that he no longer wants his job. It worked: he stepped down, and PTON was up 5% on the news.

He's still the executive chairman, so the CEOs boss. The new CEO doesn't work for Pelotons employees or non-voting stock holders. He works to please John Foley and John Foley alone

I worked for a company in a similar situation a few years back. The new CEO was fired in less than year by the old ceo/new chairman

Re: Peloton – A call for action [pdf]

#190

Post by Cd00d »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #10

So many words trying to obfuscate the simple fact that “We are a treadmill maker trying to masquerade as a tech company.”

I think they're actually a media company that happens to make hardware.

The loyalty of their customers is a result of the high-production value streamed and recorded classes and the celebrity appeal of their instructors.

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