Jill Woodworth
Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open
Thanks John. I will start with a review of our fourth quarter results. In Q4, we generated total revenue of $937 million, representing 54% year-on-year growth. The primary drivers leading to our revenue outperformance versus guidance were higher than expected bike deliveries and better than expected connected fitness churn. This was partially offset by a higher than anticipated Tread and Tread+ churn rate. We made significant progress on product wait times with Bike and Bike+ order to delivery windows at pre-pandemic levels for the past several weeks. We added 250,000 net connected fitness subscriptions in the quarter, bringing our end-of-quarter connected fitness membership base to 2.33 million, up 114% year-on-year. This was ahead of expectations reflecting strong Bike and Bike+ demand, as well as better than expected growth additions helped by secondary market sales. Despite typical seasonality and increased consumer mobility, average net monthly connected fitness churn was also better than anticipated at 0.73%. As of June 30th, we had over 874,000 digital subscribers, representing 176% year-over-year growth. This was a modest sequential decline from the previous quarter, which mostly reflects the seasonality of our digital business, which is more pronounced than for connected fitness. In addition, our growth in digital quarter-to-quarter is influenced by our marketing spend with acquisition efficiency and LTV in mind. As we discussed last quarter, we see digital as a healthy emerging business as well as an effective path for many to upgrade to connected fitness. Further Peloton's digital accessibility and compatibility with multiple operating systems is very attractive to potential Corporate Wellness partners. As a result, we expect continued growth in our digital subscriber base in fiscal 2022, albeit with some quarter-to-quarter growth rate variability. Moving to gross margin. Gross margin for the quarter was 27.1%, which came below our expectations. This was entirely due to our connected fitness product segment which had a gross margin of 11.6% below our 21% guidance. As I mentioned a moment ago initial tread and treadplates return rates were higher than our forecast as of the third quarter call. We are now recognizing a higher than anticipated expense associated with actual returns and have updated the return reserve rate accordingly. Please keep in mind that we always expected some uncertainty in modeling returns and we do not believe the delta versus our expectations is meaningful. The impact of recall related returns is added back to our adjusted EBITDA, but it's fully reflected on the revenue and gross profit lines. The Tread recalls also have some carryover impact on our logistics and warehousing costs, which came in higher than anticipated rounding out the balance of the shortfall and connected fitness margin versus expectations. As we are now largely past these recall-related activities, we expect a rapid return to more normalized and predictable execution across our logistics platform. Subscription gross margin was 63.3% and subscription contribution margin was 69.3%, modestly ahead of expectations as we continue to leverage fixed costs associated with content production. As a reminder, quarter-to-quarter, we will continue to see some variability, but we have strong visibility to our goal of a subscription contribution margin target above 70%. Turning to operating expenses, total operating expense as a percent of revenue was 59.3% compared to 32.7% in Q4 last year. operating expense deleverage was driven by our planned shift in marketing spend from Q3 to Q4, lower revenue due to recall impacts in the quarter, and the impacts of adding Precor to our financials. Sales and marketing expense was 24.5% of total revenue versus the prior year period of 13.9%. As planned, we ramped marketing in Q4, given our improved order to delivery windows and we lapped a year ago period in which we paused the majority of our advertising spend. G&A expense was 24.8% of total revenue versus 14.2% in the prior year. As you know, our business grew significantly during fiscal 2021. We made substantial investments across member support, financial systems, and other functions so that the organization can scale effectively with the growth of the business. With our member experience as our North Star, these investments will help us continue to improve our end-to-end member touchpoints. Also, we added Precor to our organization, which was a driver of some of the sequential increase in G&A inclusive of legal and integration costs related to the acquisition of Precor in Q4. R&D expense was 10% of total revenue versus 4.7% in the year ago period. Similar to recent quarters, we continue to invest in developing best-in-class hardware and software teams, both organically and through Aqua hires. Fiscal 2021 Q4 adjusted EBITDA was better than expected at a loss of $45 million representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of negative 4.8%. Net loss for Q4 was $313.2 million or a loss of $1.05 per basic and diluted share. We ended the quarter with $1.6 billion of cash in liquid assets and have additional liquidity in the form of an untapped $285 billion credit facility. As a reminder, our balance sheet benefited in fiscal 2021 from approximately $900 million of net proceeds from our convertible note offering completed in February. Now, on to our outlook. As you know, fiscal 2021 was a very unusual year in both -- in which both supply and demand shocks impacted our performance. We are now lapping those comparisons which makes predicting our year-over-year performance more challenging than normal. The Q1 and fiscal 2022 outlook we are sharing today reflect our best current estimate and includes the following assumptions. One, our return to normal seasonal patterns for Q2 and Q3 combined, comprised roughly 60% of sales, with Q1 being our lowest sales and delivery volume quarter. As in the years prior to COVID, we expect fiscal 2022 sales trends to be impacted by seasonal weather as well as holiday and New Year's resolutions purchases. We saw these trends going into fiscal 2022. Two, strong demand for bike and Bike+, with higher unit sales expected than in fiscal 2021. Three, strong acceptance of our lower price tread with our expectation that approximately 50% of treads globally will go to existing connected fitness households and therefore, those sales will not result in an incremental connected fitness subscription. Four, compelling that customer acquisition costs with rapid payback. Five, continued high engagement and healthy retention across all cohorts, including those added during the pandemic, implying expected low churn of our connected fitness subscriptions. Six, operating expense growth ahead of revenue growth as we wish to restore sales and marketing following pandemic related cuts and recognize the annualized impact of recent G&A investments we've made to scale our organization for growth. And last, number seven, sequentially improved connected fitness gross margin and positive adjusted EBITDA in the second half of this year, as we leverage our fixed investments in our supply chain and logistics platform and generate operating expense efficiencies. Moving on to revenue. In Q1, we expect revenue of approximately $800 million, representing 6% year-over-year growth and an 87% two-year CAGR. Please note that our Q1 revenue assumption contemplates a very small contribution from the upcoming launch of Tread in the U.S. and resumption of sales in the U.K. and Canada, due to our anticipated order to delivery expectations of three to four weeks, and the fact that we recognize revenue upon delivery, not sale. For fiscal 2022, we expect total revenue of $5.4 billion or 34% year-over-year growth and a 72% two-year CAGR. Given our significant manufacturing capacity and logistics investments during the past year, we are entering fiscal 2022 with a normalized backlog for our Bike portfolio and guidance reflects our expectation of continued strong demand. Please note we are assuming 15% of full year revenue will occur during Q1, which is below 19% in the COVID-affected fiscal 2021, but modestly above the 13% contribution we saw in fiscal 2018 and 2019. Moving to connected fitness subs, we expect to end Q1 with 2.47 million connected fitness subscriptions or 85% growth versus last year's Q1, implying 140,000 net adds. For Q1, we expect monthly average net churn for our connected fitness subscriptions of 0.85%. Please note that after this quarter, we will no longer guide monthly average net churn of our connected fitness subscriptions on a quarterly or annual basis. As we have discussed in the past, this is a difficult metric to forecast with precision and we therefore, do not see the value in continuing to provide guidance. However, churn remains a very important metric to us and we will continue to report our actual results each quarter. Everything we do at Peloton is designed to keep our members engaged and our churn rate low and over time, we expect our churn and retention rates to remain relatively consistent. Fiscal 2022 we forecast ending connected fitness subscriptions of 3.63 million, implying 56% growth year-over-year and 1.3 million net adds. Similar to revenue, our guidance assumes normalized seasonality, with Q1 net adds representing 11% of the full year total, down from 20% last year, but similar to the 12% we saw in fiscal 2018 and 2019. Moving on to margin, we expect total company's gross margin of 33% in Q1 and 34% in fiscal 2022, which is based on a connected fitness product gross margin of 15% in Q1 and 23% for fiscal 2022. The year-over-year growth margin compression reflects the following factors. One, the impact of our price reduction on the original bikes that we announced this afternoon. Two, the sales mix impact from launching Treads, which currently carries a lower margin than our Bike portfolio. And three, significantly elevated costs of certain commodities, including steel and semiconductors, as well as freight rates multiple times higher than normal. As we've mentioned previously, we manage our connected fitness product segment to optimize for gross profit dollars, rather than gross margin percentage. While introducing a more accessible price point for Bike and a higher sales mix of Tread will lower our gross margin percentage in the near-term. These are strategic actions that expand our addressable market and will be highly accretive to gross profit dollars over time. We continue to expect connected fitness gross profit to largely offset our fully loaded CAC over time, and our fiscal year 2022 guidance assumes a modestly positive net CAC, which follows a significantly negative net CAC in fiscal year 2021. While our current guidance reflects our best estimate of today for commodity costs and freight rates, it's possible we may see additional pressure on our connected fitness margin if costs are materially worse than we expect or if component shortages necessitate expedited shipping costs. We continue to see tightness in component supply, but we have and are taking steps to prepare for a strong holiday season unbalances fiscal year 2022 demand. Lead-times for certain components continue to be abnormally long and we're therefore utilizing longer term commitments with our supplier base, while expanding our supply chain partnerships in order to limit any disruptions. Connected fitness margin in Q1 will also be significantly impacted by last-mile delivery costs, given the seasonality of our business. Pelotons' last-mile logistics is an important aspect of our member experience. The fixed investments we have made in warehouses, vehicles, and people in our delivery network are carried throughout the year. Therefore, we will experience higher fixed costs absorption during our smaller volume first quarter, but expect significant leverage of these expenses in the remaining quarters of fiscal 2022. We expect a subscription contribution margin of 68% in Q1 and for the full year, with the improvement to last year reflecting continued fixed costs leverage. Turning to operating expenses. As I alluded to earlier, we are planning fiscal 2022 as an investment year in marketing our products and optimizing operations after making significant investments to scale our organization. During fiscal 2021, we dramatically curtailed media spend due to supply constraints and were largely off there during important holiday and New Year's resolution selling periods, which created a synthetically low spend level that we will lap in the coming year. As we restore media investments in fiscal 2022, we expect material year-over-year deleverage in sales and marketing during Q1 and for the full year. During fiscal 2021, we also scaled our organization to support the higher-than-anticipated growth in our member base since the onset of the pandemic. Much of the needed investments are now largely in place, but the annual impact of a higher G&A base will drive year-over-year deleverage in fiscal 2022. As we expect more modest sequential G&A growth going forward, we expect to achieve healthy leverage on this expense base starting next fiscal year. Finally, R&D will continue to increase as a result of both organic and acquisition related spend on hardware and software development. Based on these factors, we expect adjusted EBITDA loss to be $285 million in Q1 and a loss of $325 million in fiscal 2022 or negative 6% adjusted EBITDA margin. Keep in mind that in the absence of COVID, we would not have anticipated or intended to be profitable during fiscal 2021. Although our profitability will step back in fiscal 2022 for the reasons I've outlined, we are very confident about the economic profile of our business model and expect to be adjusted EBITDA profitable again in fiscal 2023. Lastly, we'd like to provide some thoughts on forward capital expenditures. As you know, we officially broke ground on Peloton Output Park a couple of weeks ago, we're glad to be underway with this project and we're looking forward to building Peloton products here in the U.S. As we outlined previously, we expect to invest approximately $400 million over the next two years on this plant, with much of that spend expected to occur in fiscal year 2022. In addition, we continue to make material investments in our supply chain, IT systems, and our retail footprint both domestically and internationally. These investments, which will position us for continued growth, will bring total capital spending to approximately $600 million in fiscal 2022. Looking out to fiscal 2023, we expect capital spend to taper. Lastly, we continue to see a decline in customer deposits with the rollout of deferred payment capture. While this migration does not impact revenue recognition, it will continue to apply modest working capital pressure until fully deployed. We've completed the full rollout of deferred payment capture in the U.S. and expect a full global rollout in the coming quarters. Operator, please open the line for questions.