WW International, Inc. (NASDAQ:WW) released its second-quarter earnings report before Monday’s opening bell.
Below are the transcripts from the Q2 earnings call.
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OPERATOR
Good day and welcome to the Weight Watchers second quarter 2025 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press Star then one on a touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press Star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to David Helderman, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
David Helderman (Director of Investor Relations)
Thank you for joining us today for the Weight Watchers Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Earlier this morning we released a shareholder letter and press Release with our second quarter 2025 results which are available on the Company’s corporate website located@corporate.ww.com the purpose of this call is to provide investors with some further details regarding the Company’s financial results as well as to provide a general update on the Company’s progress. Reconciliations of non-GAAP measures disclosed on this conference call to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are also available as part of the shareholder letter and press release. Before we begin, let me remind everyone that this call will contain forward-looking statements. Investors should be aware that any forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed here today. These risk factors are explained in detail in the Company’s latest Annual Report on Form 10K, quarterly report on Form 10Q, the earnings release, the Shareholder Letter and as updated by the Company’s other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Please refer to these filings for a more detailed discussion of forward-looking statements and the risks and uncertainties of such statements. All forward-looking statements are made as of today, and except as required by law, the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Joining today’s call are Tara Comonte, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Felicia DellaFortuna, Chief Financial Officer. John Volkman, Chief Operations Officer will also join for the Q and A.
Tara Comonte (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Thanks David. The second quarter of 2025 marks a pivotal moment for Weight Watchers. Our strategic reorganization has put us on stronger financial footing enabling renewed investment and innovation for long term profitable growth. We reduced our debt by more than 70%, freeing up approximately $50 million of cash annually from lower interest expense and are now relisted on NASDAQ under the ticker WW. We are fully committed to the work ahead and deeply grateful to our members, team, shareholders and lenders for their support over recent months. Today, we’re excited to talk about what’s next for Weight Watchers. We’ve been serving members on their weight loss journeys for over six decades. Our brand is known and trusted the world over. Our behavioral lifestyle program has been proven and recognized as the best weight loss program by experts for years. Our global community of coaches and members is second to none and the latest innovation in our field. GLP-1 weight loss medications are intended to be clinically prescribed with exactly the type of lifestyle change and support that we that we’ve spent years building. While others offer fragmented solutions, only Weight Watchers integrates medication access with behavioral change, coaching and community, all proven to drive superior and sustainable outcomes. And yet the landscape in which we operate has fundamentally changed over recent years and with it our paths forward. In times of great change, established brands must innovate, adapt and lead. Weight Watchers is no stranger to innovation, having navigated periods of significant change before emerging each time with greater clarity and strength. In recent years, however, high leverage and interest costs have constrained our ability to invest and evolve. With the notable exception of our sequence acquisition in 2023. With our balance sheet now reset, we are in a position to move forward with focus, flexibility and renewed ambition. Moving forward, the most important task at hand is returning this business to profitable growth. We have confidence in achieving that and are investing in the strategic framework to make it a reality. It won’t be immediate and we have a lot of work to do over the coming quarters and years, but are energized by the opportunity ahead. We have an experienced and driven team that we continue to strengthen in the second quarter. We made meaningful progress across our medical product community experience, operations and marketing teams, adding new leaders to take us through this next chapter. While our strategic reorganization was a major milestone, we do face near-term headwinds, including residual noise from the bankruptcy process, which was acute in the second quarter. In addition, following the 22 May FDA deadline prohibiting outsourcing facilities from compounding semaglutide, we’ve been working to transition impacted clinical members to alternative medications, albeit these are generally at higher price points and as other telehealth players are continuing to offer compounded GLP-1s under the guise of a personalization exemption. As we work diligently to offset these headwinds, our immediate focus is executing on our 2025 strategic plan while setting the foundation for the longer-term transformation required to reignite sustainable growth in the years ahead. We’re focused on a plan to restore Weight Watchers leadership in the category we created and expand our role in long-term weight health. We’ll continue to share more detail around our longer-term strategy over the coming quarters and our path forward is anchored by four core pillars Build a unified and engaging member experience, grow emerging and adjacent revenue streams, revitalize our brand and reclaim market leadership and drive operational excellence and efficiency. These pillars are interconnected and mutually reinforcing. They reflect the enduring strengths that have defined Weight Watchers at its best, while requiring us to modernize, differentiate, and extend our reach in a fast-changing landscape. Starting with building a unified and engaging member experience, our focus must be on strengthening our foundation while also building for the future. And that begins with the member experience. We’re clear on what our member experience needs to become seamless, personalized and connected not only across digital, virtual and in person settings, but across the full Weight Watchers ecosystem. This will require both incremental and foundational improvements to our technology and product infrastructure, much of which was built for a different era. While it will take time, it’s essential to unlocking the full value of everything Weight Watchers uniquely delivers across behavioral changes, nutritional guidance, clinical expertise and community connection data will be a key enabler of our future experience. With one of the largest proprietary data sets in weight management, we have a powerful foundation to build smarter, more personalized tools designed to truly meet members where they are and respond to their evolving needs, goals and health conditions over time. Behavior change in the service of long-term health remains core to our model. Since its launch in 1997, our science-backed points program has helped millions build sustainable habits and we’re focused on evolving it to reflect the latest in nutritional science and technology. Looking ahead, we see a meaningful opportunity to further enhance this experience by leveraging AI and machine learning technologies, integrating data from wearables, and creating more timely, personalized insights to support members in their daily choices. Equally important is the human connection. Community has always been a core part of the Weight Watchers experience and one of the most powerful drivers of sustained behavioral change and better health outcomes. As how people seek connection continues to evolve, we’re expanding our virtual formats and programming to offer more scalable and dynamic support. To help lead this work, we’re thrilled to welcome Julie Rice to our team as Chief Experience Officer. A lifelong Weight Watchers member and former board member, Julie’s work building SoulCycle completely redefines the power of community. She will lead our global workshop, business and brand efforts, working across teams to reimagine how community, coaching and connection show up throughout the member journey and bring the Weight Watchers experience to life in new and meaningful ways. As part of this new chapter, peoplehood, the community-driven wellness support platform Julie most recently co-founded, will wind down its current operations and Weight Watchers will integrate its curriculum, technology and learnings to evolve key parts of its business and product. The sum of all this improved member experience work is extensive and won’t happen overnight. However, these collective efforts form the cornerstone of our transformation, simplifying and redefining the Weight Watchers member experience, deepening engagement and driving better outcomes, Shifting to our focus to growing our emerging and adjacent revenue streams Access to clinical care represents one of the most important opportunities for long term growth at Weight Watchers and is one where we’ve already started to show the power of our Weight Watchers clinic offering. We combine access to clinical care with our trusted behavioral program to deliver a differentiated science-backed solution in an increasingly competitive scale. While scaling this opportunity will take continued investment and focus to fully realize, we believe our integrated approach positions us to lead in a rapidly evolving weight health landscape. To help lead this next phase, we recently appointed Dr. Kim Boyd as Chief Medical Officer who comes to us with deep experience across metabolic health, women’s health and obesity care as well as leadership experience from a host of innovative healthcare organizations. We’re also pleased with how our Registered Dietitian offering is scaling, which launched to our US Behavioral members in late 24 and is a natural fit for our holistic weight care model and, importantly, demonstrates our ability to expand revenue streams and ARPU, including through insurance billing. Another area of future Focus is our GLP-1 companion program. We’re beginning to shape the next phase of this program with the goal of expanding features and and support around behavioral change, adherence and long term weight health. These GLP-1 medications are intended and FDA approved to be prescribed with exactly this type of lifestyle change and support, and in fact, early data shows that we see 11% more weight loss for members who combined weight loss medication, including GLP-1, with our behavioral program after just four weeks. As we expand our clinical offering, we do so with the highest regard for member safety, building on our long-standing position as the Brand Millions Trust for healthy, sustainable, and safe weight management. Our agreements with Eli Lilly’s Lilly Direct via Gift Health and Novo Nordisk’s Dispensing Pharmacy Centre will reinforce this commitment. These integrations are designed to provide Weight Watchers Clinic members with seamless access to FDA-approved medications through at-home delivery and fulfillment, and also create opportunities for future collaboration, including real-world research and strategies to improve long-term …