Can Weight Watchers be saved? A look at the | Global Market News
Stepping onto the scale is about as American as eating apple pie, watching baseball, and visiting the drive-thru at McDonald’s. Since U.S. grownup weight problems charges have doubled since 1990 (from 21.2% in 1990 to 43.8% in 2022 for girls, and 16.9% to 41.6% in 2022 for males), you’d suppose a weight-loss company like Weight Watchers would be thriving.But when Weight Watchers’ dad or mum company, WW International (WW), declared chapter on May 6, 2025, it marked the finish of an period for how Americans lose weight—in addition to a huge reorganization for the weight-reduction plan giant.At its peak in 2018, Weight Watchers had a $6 billion market cap, and its stock was trading at $100 per share. In 2020, it boasted 4.4 million members.But digital occasions change the whole lot. Thanks to the rise of free weight-tracking apps and web sites, in addition to the introduction of GLP-1 medication like Ozempic and Wegovy, Weight Watchers’ membership applications, which counted energy and emphasised personal help teams, rapidly turned the weight-reduction plan sphere’s dinosaur.The May 2024 departure of celeb spokesperson Oprah Winfrey, who had been candid along with her weight loss struggles, did additional harm. Oprah revealed that she had misplaced 40 kilos on Weight Watchers in 2016, however relied on an unnamed weight loss drug to lose even more. Her announcement despatched WW shares tumbling 25%.💵💰Don’t miss the transfer: Subscribe to TheRoad’s free day by day e-newsletter 💰In a 2023 CNN interview, Weight Watchers’ former CEO, Sima Sistani, admitted that her company had made a “mistake” by not addressing the stigmas related to failed diets, saying, “We were contributing to the shame some of our members felt if they did our program and it didn’t work for them.”One of her options was to include a telehealth platform, Sequence, which related members with medical doctors who might prescribe weight loss medicines, however whereas the app posted 57% year-over-year growth in Q1 2025, it finally wasn’t enough for stakeholders, and Sistani was ousted in September 2024.Between 2024 and 2025, the company skilled a 12% drop in members, and as of this text’s publication, shares had been trading at simply 24 cents.So, can Weight Watchers be saved? Here’s a look at the groundbreaking company’s rise to success and decline out of business, in addition to an examination of the potential path ahead.
Weight Watchers’ founder, Jean Nidetch, misplaced 72 kilos via her program, and stored it off for all times.Adrian Greer Michael Short/Fairfax Media through Getty Images
What is Weight Watchers?Weight Watchers is a in style weight loss system that provides subscription-based memberships to help prospects lose and keep weight.The thought behind Weight Watchers started in the early Nineteen Sixties with Jean Nidetch, a Queens, New York housewife who ate compulsively. Although she tried the whole lot, from tablets to “fad diets” and even hypnosis, she merely couldn’t lose weight. In her 2015 obituary, The New York Times reported that she used to cover Mallomars in her hamper and binged on them at evening in her rest room.By age 38, she weighed 214 kilos and was depressing. So, she invited a group of obese buddies to affix her on a diet—with one catch: They needed to help discuss one another via their “anxiety, doubt, and gnawing hunger.”Related: Oprah’s internet value in 2025: How the “Queen of Media” bought so wealthyAs it turned out, the program labored. Nidetch misplaced 72 kilos—and maintained her 150-lb “goal weight” for the relaxation of her life. In the course of, she created a massively profitable business, as two of the people who had joined her program, entrepreneurs Felice and Albert Lippert, requested her to affix forces and produce her program to the broader public. Weight Watchers formally launched in May 1963.Weight Watchers’ unstoppable riseThe companions rented out space in public buildings and charged members a $2 weekly payment to attend conferences. 400 people confirmed up to their first official assembly, in order that they knew they had been onto one thing. Within a 12 months, Weight Watchers started franchising, holding 10% of gross earnings. In simply 4 years, the company had grown to 102 franchises throughout the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Israel, and Puerto Rico. By January 1968, it had a million members. Nidetch revealed her biography, The Memoir of a Successful Loser: The Story of Weight Watchers, and resigned from the company in 1973 however continued to work as a advisor, motivational speaker, and celeb, usually showing on the Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin discuss exhibits.Related: What occurred to 7 Up? How ‘The Uncola’ pale into obscurityThrough savvy advertising and product development, Weight Watchers continued to grow—not simply by holding help teams but in addition by developing merchandise, together with a sequence of in style cookbooks, a magazine, and later, for working adults who had been too drained to cook, a line of frozen dinners.In 1978, Heinz acquired Weight Watchers for $71.2 million. By the Nineties, weight loss had change into a $32 billion industry, and Weight Watchers was its clear chief, commanding $300 million in annual gross sales.Oprah Winfrey was a key participant even back then, with The New York Times chronicling her “ever-expanding-and-contracting” waistline as she tried to lose weight from Optifast, maker of liquid diet merchandise. (Spoiler alert: She didn’t.)While it could take one other 24 years for Winfrey to associate with Weight Watchers, the weight loss giant had its palms full from competitors from different, upstart diet firms, like Jenny Craig, Slim-Fast, and Nutrisystem. To set itself aside—and forward—of the competitors, Weight Watchers launched its “points” system, an algorithm that quantified a food primarily based on its quantity of carbohydrates, fats, and fiber content material.More on success:
Heinz bought Weight Watchers to a personal equity firm, Artal Luxembourg, for $735 million in 1999, which took the company public on November 15, 2001, with an opening price of $25.91.In 2003, Weight Watchers went digital, launching its first web site. In 2010, its “points” system was again overhauled: Fruits and veggies acquired zero factors, whereas sugary and processed meals got further factors.That decade, the company additionally began branching out from the weight-reduction plan sphere by incorporating fitness and wellness into its memberships. It acquired the Wello and Hot 5 apps together with Weilos, an online neighborhood platform. It additionally cast partnerships with Fitbit and expanded into mindfulness via partnerships with Headspace.
Oprah Winfrey’s very public weight loss struggles had been chronicled via her TV show, and later, as a Weight Watchers’ board member and spokesperson.Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images
Weight Watchers & ‘The Oprah Effect’But the company’s greatest deal was with Oprah herself. Her decades-long weight loss journey might have been ridiculed by the media, however hundreds of thousands of “everyday” people noticed themselves in her struggles, and her endorsement helped foster a optimistic, reliable setting that affected the company’s backside line: By 2016, revenues had risen 28%, and the company had gained a million members.Not solely did Oprah function Weight Watchers’ spokesperson from 2015–2024; she additionally joined its Board of Directors and took a 10% possession stake in WW, investing $43 million into the company. Shares skyrocketed 90% on the news, and over the course of her nine-year relationship with the model, Oprah took home a reported $221 million.Weight Watchers at this time: Can it coexist with GLP-1 medication?Masterful at reinvention, in 2018, in a persevering with effort to be larger than weight-reduction plan, Weight Watchers rebranded itself as WW International. It additionally did away with its said weight-loss requirement and renamed its help group conferences “wellness workshops.”Later that 12 months, the company additionally launched a controversial app aimed at serving to kids handle their weight, Kurbo by WW. However, Weight Watchers would pay a $1.5 million nice to the FTC in 2022 after it was discovered to be illegally accumulating kids’s knowledge.But it was the introduction of Ozempic (semaglutide) in 2017, first accepted by the FDA to deal with sort 2 diabetes, that will precipitate Weight Watcher’s demise—and set off a seismic shift all through the weight loss industry. The drug was initially formulated to help sufferers handle their blood glucose, nevertheless it had an attention-grabbing facet impact: Patients skilled, on average, 14.9% weight loss.Related: The 5 most startling Chapter 11 retailer bankruptcies since 2020Celebrities and Influencers started posting selfies showcasing their noticeably slimmer frames, whereas hashtags like #OzempicProblem began trending on TikTookay, amassing more than 250 million views. Its surge in recognition led to widespread Ozempic shortages, and in 2021, Novo Nordisk, the drug’s producer, launched a new medicine with an even larger dose of semaglutide, referred to as Wegovy. This drug was accepted particularly to deal with persistent weight management points for adults with weight problems.When Oprah stepped down from the board of Weight Watchers, she herself admitted that factors and pep talks weren’t solely chargeable for the reported 50 kilos she misplaced in 2023: She had additionally taken a weight-loss drug. And, whereas she didn’t establish it particularly, she did clarify on Jimmy Kimmel Live! that she needed to “be able to talk about whatever I want to talk about” on the subject of weight loss with none conflicts of curiosity.So, Oprah created an hour-long ABC Primetime particular titled “Shame, Blame and the Weight Loss Revolution,” that aired on March 18, 2023. It featured a panel dialogue by medical specialists who mentioned weight-loss medication comparable to Ozempic, Mounjaro, and Wegovy with a reside studio viewers.Winfrey, in the meantime, donated her remaining shares of WW stock—valued at round $16 million at the time—to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, telling Jimmy Kimmel her causes had been “so nobody can say, ‘Oh, she’s doing that [ABC] special, she’s making money, and promoting …’ No, you cannot say that.”How does Weight Watchers work?Since its beginnings in 1963, Weight Watchers has centered on dropping weight via diet plans and communal encouragement. Weekly conferences consist of “weigh-ins” and help teams, the place neighbors and strangers present reward when the scale registers decrease—and encouragement when it doesn’t.The Weight Watchers system, which assigns “points” to meals primarily based on their dietary worth, has been up to date to replicate every period’s pointers for “healthy” eating; on the whole, it included elevated servings of fish, fruits, and greens, restricted parts of bread and dairy, and even fewer sweets, fatty meals, and servings of alcohol. According to U.S. News and World Report, WW’s present membership program consists of the option to satisfy online via its cell app and web site, obtain teaching online or by telephone, or attend in-person conferences. Related: An in-depth timeline of the GameStop short squeeze sagaWW’s chapter: Will Weight Watchers exit of business?In a press release on May 6, 2025, WW International introduced that it had entered Chapter 11 chapter proceedings, revealing plans for a huge reorganization effort in the hopes of shedding $1.15 billion of extra debt—in addition to creating options for its prospects’ long-term health.That doesn’t sound like WW is giving up. In truth, in a assertion, new CEO Tara Comonte said, “the decisive actions we’re taking today, with the overwhelming support of our lenders and noteholders, will give us the flexibility to accelerate innovation, reinvest in our members, and lead with authority in a rapidly evolving weight management landscape.”Weight Watchers has assured its members that it’s going to stay “fully operational” via its reorganization, with a spokesperson telling USA Today, “there will be no impact to members or the plans they rely on to support their weight management goals,” and no foreseeable modifications to their membership, pricing, or prescriptions.Weight Watchers additionally plans to fast-track the growth of its Sequence telehealth business in addition to stay a publicly traded company.Will Weight Watchers’ stock recuperate?As of May, 2025, WW is taken into account a penny stock, with shares trading at low costs (usually below $5): On May 15, 2025, WW shares closed at simply $0.24. Penny stocks are usually characterised by low liquidity and high volatility, which signifies that costs can fluctuate considerably and quickly.Although penny stocks are normally discovered trading on over-the-counter (OTC) markets, WW continues to be listed on the Nasdaq exchange. Its reorganization strategy contains plans to additional develop into the telehealth sphere, which might drive future growth; nonetheless, its $1.15 billion debt obligations current a substantial problem for the company’s restoration. All penny stocks have the alternative for sizable beneficial properties—in addition to steep losses—so care ought to be taken when contemplating it as an investment.Related: Veteran analyst sends pressing message on S&P 500
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