Recently, it appears that Peloton is struggling. 2021 was not as great of a year for the company as 2020 was, and so far 2022 isn’t looking up for the company either.
After being negatively portrayed in the two popular television shows, “And Just Like That”, and “Billions” in the last few weeks, rumors and news reports that Peloton is halting production are swirling. According to CNBC, they obtained internal documents stating that Peloton is pausing production on their equipment.
In the report, CNBC says that Peloton’s Bike, Bike+, and Tread are getting a temporary stop to their production. A couple of reasons for this are their increasing number of competitors that continue making updates to their machines and fitness apps to keep up with Peloton.
Another is that they produced more bikes and treadmills than they could sell because their demand slipped in 2021 from their boom in 2020. CNBC says that Peloton stated these reasons in a confidential presentation on January 10th, 2022.
Peloton’s CEO
After these claims that Peloton is halting treadmill and bike production broke, CEO John Foley responded with a statement saying the reports are “false”. He also says that a leaker has been identified and they are taking legal action. In response to the production rumors, he states that Peloton is “resetting our production levels for sustainable growth.”
Foley also hints in his message to the Peloton Team that there could be layoffs coming. “In the past, we’ve said layoffs would be the absolute last lever we would ever hope to pull. However, we now need to evaluate our organization structure and size of our team…” Foley writes.
Continued Problems For Peloton
Even after Foley’s note to Peloton’s employees that attempts to clear the air around the company and leave them with a little optimism, Peloton continues to face problems.
Blackwells Capital LLC released a public letter to Peloton’s Board of Directors urging that Peloton should be sold and CEO John Foley fired. Blackwells Capital owns less than 5% of Peloton, but their letter that expresses concerns for the company is making headlines.
On top of Foley’s “failures” that Blackwells Capital lists in the letter, they state that Peloton is “…on worse footing today than it was prior to the pandemic…”
This all comes after Peloton announced that they are increasing prices to their original Bike and Tread due to “inflation”, starting on January 31st. With Peloton’s presence in the news recently, we are interested to see what happens with the company in the coming weeks and months.
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