When PwC partner and relentless champion of shareholder value Marc Suidan stepped into the CFO office at The Beachbody Company in April 2022, intrigue was bound to follow.
Certainly, a struggling fitness and health company may not be viewed by many as the optimal door-of-entry to the operations side of things. However, for Suidan—a 17-year PwC veteran—Beachbody was without a doubt an enticing challenge. As a seasoned advisor to management, Suidan had contributed shareholder insights to the turnarounds and restructurings of dozens of businesses. However, at Beachbody, he would be executing from inside the organization, where the levers for strategic as well as operational improvement would be within his reach.
Read More“Interestingly enough, half of Beachbody’s business is digital subscriptions, while the other half is the nutritional supplements that people who work out consume,” he reports. “People take energy drinks before working out and protein supplements afterward, so these are all part of part of the health supplements that we offer.” Suidan adds that the current turnaround effort has relied on three core pillars: dramatic cost-cutting, enhancing the digital experience around their top-tier content, and fixing the nutrition business.
So far, Suidan tells us, two of the three pillars are already paying off.
“We’re on track to have created over $200 million in savings in less than 2 years—I mean, it’s just crazy for a company of this size to find this much saving so fast,” comments Suidan, who notes that the company also revamped its digital platforms last March, a development that led CNN to name Beachbody’s consumer app the best in the fitness and workout app space this past December.
During the coming 12 months, according to Suidan, energy drinks, protein supplements, and the diversification of Beachbody’s nutrition channels will be top-of-mind.
“My two big pieces for the coming year are, number one, to finish that third pillar of the turnaround, and, number two, to get the message out—which is not easy, by the way, right?,” he concludes. “There are 4,000 public companies, but we need to talk about the two legs that we’ve already completed, so we should be able to get that message out.” –Jack Sweeney
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CFOTL: Tell us about The Beachbody Company … what does this company do, and what are its offerings today?
Suidan: Beachbody had been private for most of its life. We’ve built iconic brands like P90X and INSANITY. We’ve touched over 30 million people and been profitable for most of our lifetime. Then along came 2021 and COVID. Everybody’s working out at home and demand is high. In the public markets, everybody was raising a lot of money, and it was the 0% interest days of “grow at all cost.” Well, fast-forward a year later, and Beachbody—like a lot of companies—was like, “Wow, we built a bloated structure, we’re burning a lot of cash, we’re in a public market now, and we need to change up our game.” So they needed somebody transformational, which is how I became involved.
Read MoreFor my part—if you think about it—I could bring the transformational side, I could bring everything that you would need in the finances arena. I’ve helped companies with SEC filings, to be SOX-compliant, and so on, so I bring the basics that you need to be public-company finance. However, I also am fortunate enough to be able to provide transformational skills and strategic thinking around where a company needs to go.
I feel that The Beachbody Company is truly iconic. It’s sitting on incredible assets. It has incredible leaders. Carl Daikeler, the cofounder and head of the company, is the majority shareholder. So, I felt that this was an environment into which I could go and really help to turn things around. Of course, when you’re turning things around in the public eye, you’re going to be under a lot of scrutiny, so you do need a solid leader with majority shareholder rights to help to carry things out.
In a classic type of company, this turnaround situation might be cause for a lot of activism and problems in the public market. Here, though, we’re kind of shielded from this, so we are able to more efficiently execute the turnaround. Right now, we’re midsize. We’re not a small start-up with 30 people. At this point, we have 600 people—unfortunately, this is 40% fewer than where we were at our peak—but this is all part of the turnaround plan and story.
At the end of the day, I feel that this position was a really good fit for where I needed to go, what I had to offer, and what the firm needed, and that The Beachbody Company has some really strong underlying assets to protect me in going on this journey. jb
“Make the early moves to be a world-class CFO, which includes acquiring deep finance and accounting skills, as well as operational, strategic, M&A, and digital experience. You will need all of these assets to excel as an accurate and insightful CFO in any company.” –Marc Suidan, CFO, The Beachbody Company
The Beachbody Company | www.thebeachbodycompany.com | El Segundo, CA