The three-way merger of Beachbody Company Group LLC, Myx Fitness Holdings LLC and Forest Road Acquisition Corp. became final on June 25, and the company, now called The Beachbody Company Inc., began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on June 28 under the symbols BODY and BODY WS, the company announced.
Beachbody offers programs such as 21 Day Fix, Insanity and P90X. Forest Road Acquisition is a special purpose acquisition company that had been publicly traded prior to the merger and is backed in part by former NBA star Shaquille O’Neal. Myx is an at-home connected fitness platform featuring a bike and home studio.
The merger was initially announced in February.
"This marks an important milestone in Beachbody’s mission to help more people achieve their goals and lead healthy, fulfilling lives," Carl Daikeler, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Beachbody, Santa Monica, California, said in a media release. "As a public company, we aim to accelerate our growth and introduce many more people to our proven fitness and nutrition solutions. With this transaction, we will deploy capital to grow our platform, add connected fitness hardware through the acquisition of Myx and continue to create the most exciting and innovative in-home fitness content."
In May, Beachbody reported first quarter 2021 revenue of $243.3 million for the combined companies. Nutritional and other revenue from the combined companies was $131.1 million (a 23 percent increase). Digital revenue was $97.5 million (a 56 percent increase). Connected fitness revenue was $14.7 million (an increase of more than 20 times).
The company has 3.2 million digital and nutrition subscriptions, which was up from 1.9 million in March 2020. It has 204 million streamed views. Its month-over-month digital retention is 96 percent.
On June 28 Daikeler rang open the New York Stock Exchange. Later that day on the Fox Business News show “The Claman Countdown,” Daikeler said that Beachbody is the only company of its kind traded on the stock exchange.
"We have put together literally the only comprehensive company that includes fitness, nutrition, peer support and supplements that will assist you getting results," he said.
Daikeler will continue to lead the company and the Beachbody On Demand platform. Jon Congdon, Beachbody’s co-founder and Openfit’s CEO, will continue to lead the Openfit live digital streaming platform, which is owned by Beachbody. Heberto Calves will remain in his role as president of Myx, reporting to Daikeler. Forest Road’s Strategic Advisor Kevin Mayer, who previously served as CEO of TikTok and chief strategy officer for Disney, will join the company’s board of directors.
"Beachbody is a company that has been on the leading edge of content creation since its inception 22 years ago and has built a complete solution that brings together fitness and nutrition subscriptions and delivers results for customers as well as value for the company," Mayer said in the announcement. "With a subscription base that is the largest in connected fitness, supported by a founder-led management team that has proven its ability to innovate, I could not be more thrilled to join the board and help guide this company in its next chapter of growth."
The combined business will add significant cash to the balance sheet, positioning the company to deliver meaningful growth as it accelerates customer acquisition, scales the Myx business, expands internationally and engages in opportunistic mergers and acquisitions, according to the announcement. Forest Road’s stockholders approved the business combination at a stockholders’ meeting on June 24, 2021.
Shares of the company opened trading on June 28 at $13.15. They closed on June 30 at $10.40.
Other companies in the industry also recently made moves to go public. F45 Training filed paperwork for an IPO on June 21. Xponential Fitness, which owns nine studio brands including Club Pilates, CycleBar and Pure Barre, filed to do an IPO on June 28.