Post by Kitty on May 8, 2021 4:36:13 GMT
I read the transcript of the WW earnings call transcript and thought I would summarize a few things. Here is the link to the transcript. This is for the first quarter of this year:
Earnings Call Transcript
I had posted it from their earnings information the other day that during the past year they lost a lot of their workshop members (not surprising due to Covid and many workshops being closed), but they increased digital by a lot. Specifically, it was indicated that 85% of their business is now digital only. They did stress that all members are digital members, but about 15% also can do the workshops.
Their was a lot of talk about the new D360. [This part is from me, not the call: This is different than just Digital. As far as I can tell the regular "Digital" is basically like the old Digital. Of course, now that includes the virtual workshops. Digital 360 has special coaches who only Digital 360 subscribers can attend.] This is only a little bit more expensive than the regular Digital. It is unclear to me if people who do this can do the regular Virtual workshops. If you can then it would seem to make sense to choose this. They comment was Digital 360 is developed by millenials for millenials and of first-time members 50% are millenials or younger. It was really stressed that this was a different cohort of people than previous WW members.
My comment: Honestly, it seems like they want to silo the existing WW membership (mostly older) from the younger ones. This choice does that. That is, members who are workshops + digital members do get the virtual workshops and benefits of digital. They don't get to do the purely Digital 360 stuff. I don't see a way anyone could do Digital 360 and attend workshops unless you wanted to pay for both. I'm not even sure you could do it then unless you had two memberships.
They talked a lot about their e-commerce site and how it is growing. They plan to add more products plus add more partners to the site who are selling their products.
Talked about having "rightsized" their workshops. They say that once they can reduce social distancing they can double the number of in person attendees before having to add any workshops. They seem to want workshop attendance to increase but are happy they reduced the number of workshops overall.
In 2022 they are going to offer a consumer offering specifically for people with diabetes. That was interesting to me. They are stressing some of the stuff they are doing to involve WW in more health care oriented offerings (I've always felt that would make sense for them).
The 2022 "food innovation" is described as "the most comprehensive in our history and rooted in nutritional and behavioral science." They say it will make weight loss "more simple, more livable, more efficacious and more sustainable" and the new innovation will make the program "that much more personalized."
My comment is that those are a lot of buzzwords that don't really say much. It does suggest that this will be a much more radical change than any since Beyond the Scale came out in 2015. Essentially, WW has been using smart points since December, 2015. That will be 6 years at the end of this year. It is time for a change. Yes, they did green and purple and blue and that was a nice personalization. But, they all still calculate SPs by the same formula as existed from the start. They just have different zero point foods. I do hope that talking about personalization means they will still offer a choice of plans (at least somewhat) which I've really liked.
Earnings Call Transcript
I had posted it from their earnings information the other day that during the past year they lost a lot of their workshop members (not surprising due to Covid and many workshops being closed), but they increased digital by a lot. Specifically, it was indicated that 85% of their business is now digital only. They did stress that all members are digital members, but about 15% also can do the workshops.
Their was a lot of talk about the new D360. [This part is from me, not the call: This is different than just Digital. As far as I can tell the regular "Digital" is basically like the old Digital. Of course, now that includes the virtual workshops. Digital 360 has special coaches who only Digital 360 subscribers can attend.] This is only a little bit more expensive than the regular Digital. It is unclear to me if people who do this can do the regular Virtual workshops. If you can then it would seem to make sense to choose this. They comment was Digital 360 is developed by millenials for millenials and of first-time members 50% are millenials or younger. It was really stressed that this was a different cohort of people than previous WW members.
My comment: Honestly, it seems like they want to silo the existing WW membership (mostly older) from the younger ones. This choice does that. That is, members who are workshops + digital members do get the virtual workshops and benefits of digital. They don't get to do the purely Digital 360 stuff. I don't see a way anyone could do Digital 360 and attend workshops unless you wanted to pay for both. I'm not even sure you could do it then unless you had two memberships.
They talked a lot about their e-commerce site and how it is growing. They plan to add more products plus add more partners to the site who are selling their products.
Talked about having "rightsized" their workshops. They say that once they can reduce social distancing they can double the number of in person attendees before having to add any workshops. They seem to want workshop attendance to increase but are happy they reduced the number of workshops overall.
In 2022 they are going to offer a consumer offering specifically for people with diabetes. That was interesting to me. They are stressing some of the stuff they are doing to involve WW in more health care oriented offerings (I've always felt that would make sense for them).
The 2022 "food innovation" is described as "the most comprehensive in our history and rooted in nutritional and behavioral science." They say it will make weight loss "more simple, more livable, more efficacious and more sustainable" and the new innovation will make the program "that much more personalized."
My comment is that those are a lot of buzzwords that don't really say much. It does suggest that this will be a much more radical change than any since Beyond the Scale came out in 2015. Essentially, WW has been using smart points since December, 2015. That will be 6 years at the end of this year. It is time for a change. Yes, they did green and purple and blue and that was a nice personalization. But, they all still calculate SPs by the same formula as existed from the start. They just have different zero point foods. I do hope that talking about personalization means they will still offer a choice of plans (at least somewhat) which I've really liked.
