All right, good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us. I'm Joe Altobello, Leisure Analyst here at Raymond James. I'm very pleased to have with me this morning senior management from Xponential Fitness, including CEO Mike Nuzzo and CFO John Meloun. Welcome, gentlemen. Xponential Fitness is a leading franchisor in the healthy and demographically attractive boutique fitness space with brands that include Club Pilates, Pure Barre, YogaSix, StretchLab, and BFT.
It's probably an understatement to say that it's been quite an interesting couple of years for the company, as you've had to contend with some management turnover and a number of distractions, which we'll discuss in a moment. Although the good news is we seem to be closer to the end than the beginning on each of these. So with that in mind, I just want to start with you, Mike. You're the new guy, so to speak. Having joined the company a few months ago, you succeeded Mark King, who was the CEO before you. What attracted you to Xponential? And I guess, what are your initial thoughts so far after the first few months?
First, Joe, thanks for having us. Good to be here.
Thank you.
Yeah, I would say that the space is very attractive, so boutique fitness, all the statistics and macro trends would point to this being a really good space with great longer-term macro opportunity. The second is brands. W e've got some great brands, and I've had a chance to spend time learning about the brands, spending time with the management team. We had our franchise convention a couple of weeks ago in Las Vegas, so I had a chance to meet a number of our franchisees.
I'd spent time in other meetings with them. A really impressive group, and I see the brands as having a lot of growth potential, and the third is I'm an operator by experience, and I saw some opportunities within the organization to leverage my operating experience to improve, especially this dynamic between our corporate support and the brands and the studios. So far, I would say all three of those elements ring very true. I'm very excited about the work that we've done in a short period of time and the progress we've made and how we're positioned for 2026.
Question for you, John. We've known each other a little bit longer, a few years now, even before the IPO. Maybe you can talk about the company today versus when you did go public, how it's changed, how it's evolved, for example.
Yeah, I think when you look back at the original thesis around Xponential, it was to create a portfolio of boutique fitness brands. Early on, it was a little bit more of a land grab as far as acquiring brands and deploying them across the U.S. at scale.
As you kind of look forward now, what you kind of learned and realized is the way you deploy the brands, you need to make sure you put in place, like Mike was kind of alluding to, some of the infrastructure to be able to support them. A s you look back, at one point, we had 11 brands. Today, we sit at five. We've gone through the portfolio and really kind of focused in on where do we want to kind of deploy capital and resources where you get the best return on your investment.
A s we kind of went from an original land grab, selling, deploying, today, we've scaled that down into, okay, all these things that we deployed, what was really working, what wasn't working, and we've divested those brands. And now what we've kind of done is gone from more of a decentralized operating structure to more of a centralized operating structure to leverage scale, to drive more margin pass-through and leverage in the business.
T he business today, I would say, is lighter, it's leaner, it's more direct in the way it supports its franchisees. I think the way we look at growth and scale from this point forward is more about sustainability. It's not just selling just to sell and opening just to opening.
It's more focused on selling in the brands that we know have good four-wall economics, providing really good support to our franchisees and ensuring that they launch and achieve high AUVs early on and they stay there. So it's a more professionalized business today than when you look back when the company was first kind of getting going.
So we talked about the five brands. I mentioned the five brands earlier, one of which is Club Pilates. And I think some have made the case that Club Pilates might be worth more than your entire company at this point. I f that is the case, hypothetically speaking, how do you guys look to maybe unlock that value that may not be readily apparent right now in the market?
Yeah, I mean, I think for us, one thing that we know about Club Pilates is it's a great business. I mean, the four-wall economics are very strong. The franchisees are probably making 2x what they bought into. For us, I think it's how do you get more units open faster around Club Pilates. The AUVs kind of get to this $1 million and they ramp there very quickly. I t's how do you unlock growth above the $1 million is where we've been spending a lot of time looking at the business.
But for us, the valuation on Club Pilates versus the entire business, we're just more focused on continuing to open up units and scale. So the valuation, I think, will come as we address some of the other issues the company's been working through. But for our purposes, Club Pilates is the golden goose, and it's all about just continuing to get more units open faster.
Yeah, and I would say I agree with John completely. There's a lot of growth potential in the business domestically and internationally, where I think we've just started to really dig into some of the opportunities there in Europe and Asia. I'd also say that as a leader in the space, I think we have a great opportunity to really lean in on the business. So I think we're just getting started with areas of innovation, areas of technology, and member engagement.
And so I really see our chance here to grow in units, but also to grow in our leadership position within the Pilates space, which is a great space to be in. I still feel like our awareness could be higher, even with a very scaled network today. I think there's just a lot of opportunity organically and then in the unit growth area.
Y ou did mention international. I'll probably go there next. What's the strategy to grow the business internationally, and how big could that ultimately be over time?
It's a good question. I don't know that we'd put sort of an opportunity in terms of dollars out there at this point. I think where we are today is we have a few countries where we have been able to demonstrate scale. Australia and Japan have been really, really good countries, really good master franchise relationships. We're looking for more of those. And we're not just looking to plant flags in every country over the globe.
There are clearly developed, advanced, fitness-friendly opportunities within Europe and Asia that we feel like if we get the right master franchisee, we get the right support, we can really expand, especially the Club Pilates brand. I would see that as the initial focus. And then if there's opportunities with the other brands, BFT was sort of born internationally in Australia. We already have a great master franchise relationship and expansion with BFT. I do see Club Pilates in all the usual suspect countries that you would think about.
I f we think about your brands, we've got Pilates on one side and maybe StretchLab on the other, right? So if you could provide some insight to the audience about why it's tough to scale the StretchLab business, and maybe more importantly, what are you guys doing to kind of fix that business?
Yeah, I'll start, and if you want to. I think the fact of the matter is a couple of years ago, the AUVs were in pretty good shape for most of the StretchLab studios. And we talked about the Medicare Advantage that had been cut back across a lot of modalities. And so that was an impact on the business, for sure. But today, I mean, for a number of our studios, the gap in the membership versus where they are versus target is not that substantial.
W e have largely applied the playbook that we've done with the other brands to StretchLab. T hat's not necessarily the right way to go about it. It's a fundamentally different business that has attributes that would make it more similar to a massage business or a recovery business.
What we're doing right now is we're looking at really every aspect of the business, our target customer, how we want to engage with customers, specifically around that first stretch, how they navigate our website, performance marketing, even local activation, which I think can be very powerful. W e've got a number of initiatives. We've got a task force that is engaging around it. And I feel like we'll make some progress there. And again, I think it's just resetting how we think about the go-to-market for that brand.
I f we think about Pilates and barre, for example, they're very class-based. With StretchLab, it's usually one-to-one. So how do you get over that sort of impediment and scale that business?
Yeah, you want to.
Yeah, I mean, I think early on, we did a really good job, I think, with scaling the business. I mean, you have over 500 locations, close to 600 open in StretchLab. AUVs were high. We were able to develop an offering where it was one-on-one stretch, was profitable for franchisees, and still is. It's just not at the level of profitability we need it to be. I think the key here is it's about volume.
I think Mike was touching on it, is you got to make sure that the members continue to use their memberships and they stay longer. Some of the challenges we faced with the one-on-one stretching is you become accustomed to your stretcher, the person that you typically go see. When you see that Flexologist leave, it had an impact on membership.
We've got to find a way where the one-on-one stretching doesn't become so personal that people become attached to their Flexologist. Two, I think, and I learned this early on when I was at The Joint Chiropractic as well, it's about really educating the consumer and the member on why you joined StretchLab to begin with, is so you could become more flexible. But you need to maintain that.
I think one of the things that we didn't do very well is educating the consumer on maintenance and making sure that whether it's you come four times a month, eight times a month, or even one time a month, it's important that you stay consistent.
I think if you could educate the consumer on why they should continue to keep coming and not just to appease maybe a short-term ailment, you get the volume for which the one-on-one will continue to work because there's enough volume going through the studio. You don't have to manage so much on the one-to-one stretching like the throughput, which is typically people will come in the mornings and afternoons.
But if you have enough consumers that are scheduling throughout the day, you could address the one-on-one by not having stagnant labor in the four-wall. So to me, it's about engaging the consumer, making sure that you keep them. So really focusing on attrition, I think, is a huge piece of the business.
Yeah, when we've done some recent customer surveys for StretchLab, and first of all, the folks using it love the product, and there are many folks using it who are my age and older. The one thing that resonated with me was somebody, one of the feedback elements was, "It's giving me more years to do the things that I love doing, like golf and tennis and padel." It's like that ability to stay active through the mobility, through flexibility, I think, is something that we now are seeing as a really, really great awareness message, and so we're integrating that into our performance marketing,
So it's not just something you need to do after back surgery, for example. You need to kind of continue with this.
I would argue that anybody, again, my age and older, should be investing in that.
Got it. You mentioned earlier, John, you had 11 brands at one point. You're down to five. How long do you give a StretchLab, for example, before you might think about divesting that potentially?
I mean, I think it was 650,000 at its peak. I have no doubt that we can't get it back there or higher with making some of the adjustments to the model. At this point, it's even contributing to the overall platform. W e're in no rush to kind of change strategies there. That being said, it does take time to kind of implement some of these changes and really see the impacts in AUV. So from this perspective, it's not bleeding any losses to the company.
It has slowed in a growth perspective. But I think the moment you can kind of start tipping AUVs back in the positive direction, you'll see growth return back on that brand. So at this point in time, we're not looking to divest StretchLab. We're looking to make the necessary changes to get it back into where it was. But listen, opportunistically, we'll do what's right for the business long term. A s of right now, we have a whole list of things that we're trying to do within the box to kind of redrive AUV and performance.
Same sort of sales have slowed a little bit. I think they went negative, in fact, in the third quarter. A couple of questions there. First, what's causing that slowdown? And maybe second, what are you doing about it to kind of reaccelerate that?
Yeah, I'll start if you want to jump in. I guess I would say that having an expectation for driving positive comps is table stakes for us. And for us, it's really important to continue with driving our top-of-funnel metrics because, again, we actually have a pretty low attrition in most of our brands. But you will always have attrition that you need to replace with new members. I n most cases, those members are coming in at higher price points.
S o you should be able to drive a consistent positive comp. T hat falls into a lot of the efforts that we're focused on around top-of-funnel, driving top-of-funnel to all of our brands. O ne of my early observations was we were good, but there were opportunities to improve that by using some corporate marketing operations, some better digital investments. And so we're focused on that.
I would say when it comes to comp, especially with Club Pilates, which is the overwhelming driver of comp in our business, comp is part of the story. It's not the whole story. And this gets back to what John was alluding to, the fact that we've got this amazing studio economic proposition that has benefited our franchisees in such a significant way.
The fact that we open these studios, they ramp quicker than most concepts that I've ever seen to this $1 million AUV, driving substantial four-wall and one to two-year returns for our franchisees is amazing. T hat ramp, that pre-first-year comp ramp, will have an impact on the comp potential for that box in years two, three, and four.
None of us are disappointed with a studio concept that ramps that quickly, gets to that level of profitability, and that level of return for our franchisees that creates a massive demand for new units, and so I love everything about that. I think it will impact the comp KPI, and conceivably, I mean, depending on the mix of openings within a given year, we may have years where we're putting more new studios in infill locations within markets, and so what we saw as maybe that getting to a first year of 900,000 or a million, maybe that comes back down to 800,000, and it provides more comp opportunity in those second and third years. That's not a bad scenario either because even at 800,000, we are thrilled. We are absolutely thrilled.
So, I think, again, I agree with the premise that we need to be driving positive comps in the business. We don't have to be driving double-digit positive comps for the model to be incredibly successful. And again, this dynamic around making sure we have healthy AUVs is what we spend a lot of time focused on. And I think we're on the right track to driving improvement across the board on it.
Yeah, I think Mike said it on it right. I mean, same-store sales, yeah, it's a KPI that a lot of people track. To me, if you hit the zero to low single digit, we're happy with that. I think the focus really around driving royalty production. C an we continue to see good system-wide sales growth year-over-year in Club Pilates and our other brands, which drives royalty production?
Controlling SG&A and getting margin flow through is really where we should be focused. U nderstand the KPI. It's a good indicator of whether or not the boxes are healthy. But people need to understand these boxes are healthy almost immediately, and they stay there. So even at an 800K AUV, 900, a million, these franchisees are producing more income and margin than what was originally designed in the box. We 're very happy with that. So for us, I think, yes, it's good to keep an eye on same-store sales, but the focus should really be around how much system-wide sales is each brand producing and is it growing year-over-year?
E arlier, I alluded to some distractions and maybe the impact they might be having on the stock price, for example. I wanted to kind of walk through those if we could, including starting with the investigations by the SEC and the DOJ. Can you update us on where both of those stand at this point?
Yeah, I mean, we don't publicly comment on open investigations. I can tell you that the company is still cooperating with both of the regulatory agencies and focused on getting resolution as soon as possible.
I believe the SEC has come out and said.
The SEC has cleared their investigation. They said that they have closed their investigation and have moved on, so there's nothing ongoing there.
Okay, super. In terms of franchisee lawsuits, any chance of a settlement there at some point?
Yeah, we have a deal and structure in place, currently working on that. T here was a franchisee class action. We disclosed it in our 10-Q. So the details are there. But it seems like there's a deal on the table there, and it's going through the normal process of getting solidified.
Any timing on that?
I'm not sure on timing.
Okay.
Yeah.
Got it. I n the midst of all this, you're doing a refinancing.
Oh, yes.
G ot that going on too. So maybe talk to us about your debt structure and what you're hoping to get out of the refinancing at some point.
Yeah, I mean, the refinancing. W e sit today with about $370 million in debt. W e also have a Pref that's out there that's about 8 million shares. T he way we're looking at kind of the refinancing is, one, certainty. So we want to get something done before the debt comes current in May. Personally, I put a goal out there getting something done before year-end and feel very, very positive on having something to announce before year-end. Two, our focus is around cost of capital and over time making sure that as interest rates continue to fall, that we benefit from that. And then just trying to get the cheapest cost of capital in place for our shareholders as possible.
So, given some of the regulatory stuff, that does create some headwinds for us and trying to create some options as far as what we're limited to. But do feel like we have some options on the table that are positive for the company. One, putting in place a structure that will give us a new fresh five years of runway with financing. But two, allow us to kind of benefit from rate reductions and capital decreases over time. F eel really good. W e have some things on the table. And I do think by year-end, for sure, we'll have something to announce.
Okay. I believe your annual expense is approaching $50 million, which I don't have to remind you eats up a good chunk of your EBITDA, almost half of it. I n terms of potential savings, what might that $50 million number look like, for example, in 2026 and 2027?
Obviously, rate increases would cause that to go down. Our focus right now is just getting a refinancing in place. I mean, as far as being able to get a lower cost of capital and interest rate reductions, the company will generate a significant amount of cash over the years. And yes, half of it gets eaten up in interest. But there will be an ability for the company to either pay down debt or do other things with the excess capital if we need to do over time. A t this point, the rate's the rate. O ur focus is just kind of streamlining the capital structure. It's easier for investors to understand and allows us to benefit from rate reductions in time.
Before we open up for questions from the audience, maybe Mike could give us your kind of vision of Xponential over the next two, three, four, five years, what this company looks like.
Yeah. I think we want to actually not be as, I guess, exciting with all of the stuff that has created distractions. I think we are moving along a path of being a really, really solid franchisor, a franchisor that understands a space. So boutique fitness has a lot of great experience in driving growth and scaling brands like Club Pilates, like YogaSix, like Pure Barre, and a franchisor that franchisees are excited to partner with.
I feel like a lot of the strategy things that we have shaped over just the last couple of months around investments in marketing, around support operationally, around using technology, I think those are the things that are going to get us to that goal. At the same time, we've also focused on how do we preserve a very streamlined operation.
W e've made some tough decisions, decisions that really helped us to shape this relationship between the Center of Excellence and the brands. W e were, I think we've described it, we were a little bit of a Frankenstein's monster when it came to our organizational structure. So I think we've made some really good foundational decisions there to get the organization to the right size.
W e'll probably have a little bit more opportunity there as we go along. But I think we're well on the path there. So at the end of the day, 2026 becomes a lot about execution and how do we take these initiatives that we know will help drive the business and implement them as best as we can? And I think the good news is we brought on some talent recently. We have a good team.
We have a lot of people with a lot of good experience to be able to make that happen. I feel really good. I feel good about having a portfolio of brands that we feel really good can grow and providing all the resources to make that happen.
Very helpful. We've got about four minutes left. If there's any questions or two from the audience, feel free. All right. Well, I guess we're good. All right, Mike, John, thank you guys. Thank you, everybody. Enjoy the rest of the conference.