🚨 Volatility alert — not for the easily rattled.

WW International (formerly WeightWatchers) provides subscriptions with meal plans and tools to lose weight.

Last month, they jumped on the fast-growing weight-loss drug train, leading Goldman to raiseWW

’s target price to $13 (100% upside) yesterday.

Investors may know WW for two reasons:

• Oprah’s 2015 partnership and investment of $43M — which sentWW
  up nearly 1,500% in the following three years.
• WeightWatchers’ 2018 rebrand to WW — which confused the sh*t outta members and led to WW falling over 90% since.

Pivoting to wellness

It was all part of a cultural shift from dieting to health and wellness — terms that blurred over the years and have created a $1.5T industry.

But WW’s rebrand was poorly executed as memberships began dropping — and not even Oprah was able to bring it back.

How did the rebrand play out? Almost as bad as “New Coke”…

• WW’s 2022 sales were nearly 50% lower than its WeightWatchers days.
• After years of profitability, WW flipped to a loss in 2022 — burning $250M on $1B of revenue.

In 2022, WW brought in a new CEO Sima Sistani — taking the focus back to weight loss.

Pivoting back to weight loss

Last month, WW acquired telehealth startup Sequence for $132M — briefly sendingWW

up 90% before collapsing. It’s a play on the rapidly growing weight-loss drug market:

• Since 2021, the FDA has approved a series of highly effective weight-loss drugs for chronic weight-loss management.
• It’s led to a major shortage in these drugs — which Sistani calls “the biggest innovation in our industry today.”

And that’s where Sequence comes in — connecting patients with doctors who can prescribe weight-loss drugs. WW’s future now hinges on weight loss once again.

Read more: Are weight-loss treatments the blockbuster drugs of the decade?